Computer Designed Compensation Filters for Use in Radiation Therapy

摘要

A computer program was written in the MUMPS language to design filters for use in cancer radiotherapy. The filter corrects for patient surface irregularities and allows homogeneous dose distribution with depth in the patient. The program does not correct for variations in the density of the patient. The program uses data available from the software in Computerized Medical Systems Inc.'s Radiation Treatment Planning package. External contours of General Electric CAT scans are made using the RTP software. The program uses the data from these external contours in designing the compensation filters. The program is written to process from 3 to 31, 1cm thick, CAT scan slices. The output from the program can be in one of two different forms. The first option will drive the probe of a CMS Water Phantom in three dimensions as if it were the bit of a routing machine. Thus a routing machine constructed to run from the same output that drives the Water Phantom probe would produce a three dimensional filter mold. The second option is a listing of thicknesses for an array of aluminum blocks to filter the radiation. The size of the filter array is 10 in. by 10 in. The Printronix printer provides an array of blocks 1/2 in. by 1/2 in. with the thickness in millimeters printed inside each block. (Author)