Warm-starting evolutionary plan optimization for high-dose-rate brachytherapy treatment to reduce optimization time

Obtaining Smoothly Navigable Approximation Sets in Bi-Objective Multi-Modal Optimization with an Application to Prostate HDR Brachytherapy Automated Treatment Planning

Even if a Multi-modal Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MMOEA) is designed to find all locally optimal approximation sets of a Multi-modal Multi-objective Optimization Problem (MMOP), there is a risk that the found approximation sets are not smoothly navigable because the solutions belong to various niches, which reduces the insight for...

Simultaneous ThermoBrachytherapy: Electromagnetic Simulation Methods for Fast and Accurate Adaptive Treatment Planning

The combination of interstitial hyperthermia treatment (IHT) with high dose rate brachytherapy (HDR‐BT) can improve clinical outcomes since it highly enhances the efficiency of cell kill, especially when applied simultaneously. Therefore, we have developed the ThermoBrachy applicators. To effectively apply optimal targeted IHT, treatment...

The design of a manually operated compliant mechanism steerable needle for high dose-rate brachytherapy of the prostate

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men and third in terms of mortality. High dose rate brachytherapy is a common and effective treatment to treat this cancer. High dose rate brachytherapy requires the implantation of several needles into the prostate trough which a radiation source is introduced. This implantation can present a number...

Fast and fully-automated multi-criterial treatment planning for adaptive HDR brachytherapy for locally advanced cervical cancer

Purpose: To develop and evaluate a fast, automated multi-criterial treatment planning approach for adaptive high-dose-rate (HDR) intracavitary + interstitial brachytherapy (BT) for locally advanced cervical cancer. Methods and materials: Twenty-two previously delivered single fraction MRI-based HDR treatment plans (SF_clin) were...

Fast automated multi-criteria planning for HDR brachytherapy explored for prostate cancer

We developed a fast and fully-automated, multi-criteria treatment planning workflow for high dose rate brachytherapy (HDR-BT). In this workflow, the patient-CT with catheter reconstructions and dwell positions are imported from the clinical TPS into a novel system for automated dwell time optimisation. The optimised dwell times are then...