From model-based dose computation to tomotherapy

This paper describes the first years of what became known as the Tomotherapy Research Group at the Department of Medical Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW). The group's roots were in algorithm and software development for radiation therapy dose calculations. The concept of helical tomotherapy sprang from the design of a treatment unit which could make the computation easier which in turn created a treatment unit that created the capability to do image-guided radiotherapy. The paper discusses the genesis of our concepts and some of the difficulties encountered along the way.