PRESCRIBED AND DATA-DRIVEN AUTOMATED
PLANNING METHOD
Tangential breast IMRT should be simple to implement and execute;
therefore, the role of automation here is to provide standardization
and to eliminate any technical complexity while still achieving
the prescribed clinical objectives. The methodology presented is
very specific to breast treatment planning as we have effectively
captured the human
decision-making for breast IMRT planning by
developing
both prescribed and data-driven rules and encoding
these rules so that they can be implemented as an automated
approach.
Other automated
planning methods based on data-driven
concepts are not well suited
to the breast radiation therapy
problem. Breast radiation therapy
is highly dependent on beam
geometry and the problem of placing beams is highly constrained.
Most automated planning methods
are focused on dose-volume
objectives with beam geometry
as a secondary consideration.
Such conventional commercial automated planning algorithms
do
not provide clinically relevant solutions “out of the box” and require
user intervention to overcome these limitations. The concept of
encoding
rules and specifying clinical objectives with associated
priorities using the breast module is an efficient way to automate
the tangential beam IMRT breast planning process while maintaining
the properties and quality of the manual methodology.