A Brief Note on the Limitation of Treatment Planning in Proton Therapy

摘要

Currently, proton therapy is being used for the cancertreatment at 11 centers in the United States of America [1],and there is an increasing interest in using proton therapyat many other institutions, which have proton centerseither at the planning stage or under construction. [1] Theprimary reasons of using protons over photons for thecancer treatment is because of proton's physical propertiessuch as finite beam range, near-zero exit dose, and sharplateral penumbra. [2,3] Treatment planning in protontherapy is done with an aim of depositing the majority ofthe dose in the tumor, which is typically covered by thespread-out Bragg peak (SOBP) and avoiding the protonbeam ranging into the critical structure.