Inverse planning for intensity-modulated radiotherapy

摘要

A radiation treatment apparatus (10) includes a diagnostic imaging scanner (12) that acquires a diagnostic image of a subject. A contouring processor (54) computes a radiation treatment objective based thereon. A radiation delivery apparatus (60) delivers radiation to the subject. An inverse planning processor (80) computes radiation beamlet parameters conforming with the radiation treatment objective by: grouping the beamlet parameters; assigning a weight to each group (82, 84, 86); optimizing a first group (82) to produce an intermediate dosage objective corresponding to the treatment objective weighted by a weight of the first group (82); and optimizing successive groups (84) to produce with the previously optimized groups (82) an increasing intermediate dosage objective corresponding to the treatment objective weighted by the combined weights of the previous and current groups (82, 84). A conversion processor (90) converts the optimized beamlet parameters into configuration parameters of the radiation delivery apparatus (60).