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Radiation Planning Assistant - A Streamlined, Fully Automated Radiotherapy Treatment Planning System
Published on: April 11, 2018
Automated IMRT planning in Pinnacle : A study in head-and-neck cancer
J M A M Kusters1, K Bzdusek2, P Kumar3
1Department of Radiation Oncology, Radboud university medical center, Postbox 9101, 6500 HB, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. martijn.kusters@radboudumc.nl.
Purpose:
This study evaluates the performance and planning efficacy of the Auto-Planning (AP) module in the clinical version of Pinnacle 9.10 (Philips Radiation Oncology Systems, Fitchburg, WI, USA).
Methods And Materials:
Twenty automated intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) plans were compared with the original manually planned clinical IMRT plans from patients with oropharyngeal cancer.
Results:
Auto-Planning with IMRT offers similar coverage of the planning target volume as the original manually planned clinical plans, as well as better sparing of the contralateral parotid gland, contralateral submandibular gland, larynx, mandible, and brainstem. The mean dose of the contralateral parotid gland and contralateral submandibular gland could be reduced by 2.5 Gy and 1.7 Gy on average. The number of monitor units was reduced with an average of 143.9 (18%). Hands-on planning time was reduced from 1.5-3 h to less than 1 h.
Conclusions:
The Auto-Planning module was able to produce clinically acceptable head and neck IMRT plans with consistent quality.
