CorePLAN: Research on Dose Calculation Algorithm

I had developed a radiation treatment planning system (TPS)1, named CorePLAN2, with Seyong Kim and other Ph.D. students from Prof. Tae-Suk Suh’s Lab (August 2005–June 2008). I led the CorePLAN Development Team for the period, and in particular, I implemented and researched on dose (or energy) computation methods: Collapsed Cone Convolution Algorithm3 for X-ray beams and Hogstrom Algorithm4 for electron beams. These methods account tissue inhomogeneity reasonably, and therefore they are de facto standard methods for modern TPS. I hold twenty-one registered software certificates for this work. The following figure shows the screenshot of CorePLAN.

Fig. 1
Figure 1: the screenshot of CorePLAN showing the energy distributions for a patient (in cGy). There are four X-ray beams aimed to a patient with two wedged beams (depicted as dashed triangles). The center of the intersection of the beams (the circled red cross) is situated at the cancer mass (delimited by a solid red contour). Note that the clinical target volume (solid orange contour) is much larger than the tumor volume in order to kill nearby metastasized cells. One can see that radiant energy is focused at the cancer: the transparent red background around the cancer implies the region receives high energy.

Some notable things

The development of CorePLAN was supported by three national projects: Project Development of a Radiation Oncology Therapy Comprehensive Control System Based on Network, Project Development of New Technology for Radiation Medical Equipment, and Project Development of a updated technological radiation therapy planning system.

Notes

  1. The treatment planning system (TPS) calculates the energy distributions of radiation beams in a patient with the patient’s CT images and the configuration of the radiation beams. With TPS, clinicians can design high-quality radiation therapy plans that save normal tissues around the cancer mass while efficiently eradicating it by focusing the energy of radiation beams into the mass [^]
  2. Official website: www.coreplan.com [^]
  3. T.R. Mackie, J.W. Scrimger, and J.J. Battista, “A convolution method of calculating dose for 15-MV x rays”, Medical Physics 12 188–196 (1985).
    A. Ahnesjo, “Collapsed cone convolution of radiant energy for photon dose calculation in heterogeneous media”, Medical Physics 16 577–592 (1989). [^]
  4. K.R. Hogstrom, M.D. Mills, and P.R. Almond, “Electron beam dose calculations”, Physics of Medicine and Biology 26 445–459 (1981). [^]

Other works at Seoul C&J, Inc.

See also