A conceptual study on real-time adaptive radiation therapy optimization through ultra-fast beamlet control

A central problem in the field of radiation therapy (RT) is how to optimally deliver dose to a patient in a way that fully accounts for anatomical position changes over time. As current RT is a static process, where beam intensities are calculated before the start of treatment, anatomical deviations can result in poor dose conformity. To overcome these limitations, we present a simulation study on a fully dynamic real-time adaptive radiation therapy (RT-ART) optimization approach that uses ultra-fast beamlet control to dynamically adapt to patient motion in real-time. A virtual RT-ART machine was simulated with a rapidly rotating linear accelerator (LINAC) source (60 RPM) and a binary 1D multi-leaf collimator (MLC) operating at 100 Hz. If the real-time tracked target motion exceeded a predefined threshold, a time dependent objective function was solved using fast optimization methods to calculate new beamlet intensities that were then delivered to the patient. To evaluate the approach, system response was analyzed for patient derived continuous drift, step-like, and periodic intra-fractional motion. For each motion type investigated, the RT-ART method was compared against the ideal case with no patient motion (static case) as well as to the case without the use RT-ART. In all cases, isodose lines and dose-volume-histograms (DVH) showed that RT-ART plan quality was approximately the same as the static case, and considerably better than the no RT-ART case. Based on tests using several different motion types, RT-ART was able to recover dose conformity to the level that it was similar to an ideal RT delivery with no anatomical changes. With continued advances in real-time patient motion tracking and fast computational processes, there is significant potential for the RT-ART optimization process to be realized on next generation RT machines.