Spatially adaptive dose-grid method for efficient proton therapy optimization involving small or irregular structures
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Updated: Nov 7, 2026
Proton Therapy Delivery and Its Clinical Application in Select Solid Tumor Malignancies
Published on: February 6, 2019
Xue Hong1, Weijie Zhang1, Jufri Setianegara2
1Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, USA.
Background:
Fine spatial resolution (e.g., 0.5-1.5 mm) can be important for accurate dose representation and treatment-plan optimization in cases involving small or irregular targets and organs at risk (OARs). However, applying a uniformly fine dose grid across the entire patient volume introduces substantial computational demands.
Objective:
This work proposes a spatially adaptive grid-based proton dose calculation and treatment planning method to optimize dose accuracy and computational efficiency simultaneously.
Methods:
The proposed method retains fine spatial sampling in the target and selected OARs while using coarse sampling in the remaining body region. The method was evaluated in five clinical cases, including two head-and-neck cases, two meningioma cases, and one cardiac arrhythmia case, and was compared with uniformly fine and predominantly coarse grid strategies.
Results:
Across the five cases, ADAPTIVE reduced the OAR-dose RMSE by 92.7 %-98.3 % relative to COARSE. Compared with FINE, ADAPTIVE reduced dose-calculation and optimization times by averages of 70.8 % and 83.8 %, respectively, while closely reproducing the OAR dose metrics obtained with FINE.
Conclusions:
This work introduces a novel spatially adaptive grid-based proton dose calculation and treatment planning method for clinical cases with small/irregular OAR/target, which provides an accurate and efficient treatment plan on multiscale adaptive dose grid.
