Treatment planning

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12150235-B2
Application number	US-202117174986-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 12, 2021
Priority date	Jul 8, 2016
Publication date	Nov 19, 2024
Grant date	Nov 19, 2024

Abstract

An example method includes: receiving, from a treatment planning process, information that is based on a dose distribution for an irradiation target; and performing at least one of the following operations: moving structures to trim spots of a particle beam so that the spots of the particle beam approximate pre-trimmed spots for which characteristics are obtained based on the information received; moving structures to produce a trimming curve for a layer of an irradiation target based on a specification of a trimming curve for the layer included in the information received; moving structures to produce a single trimming curve for all radiation fields of an irradiation target based on specifications of the single trimming curve included in the information received; or moving structures based on configuration information for the structures in the information received.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
storing, in computer memory, a library containing first information defining (a) positions of sets of parallel leaves of a configurable collimator that are extendible and retractable in a dimension to produce trimmed spots of a particle beam and (b) a configuration of carriages on the configurable collimator, the positions of the leaves being based on which of the leaves are extended and which of leaves are extracted;
receiving, from a treatment planning process, second information comprising a dose distribution for an area of an irradiation target to be treated using the particle beam;
obtaining a coarse beam spot set based on a minimum dosage of the particle beam and a maximum dosage of the particle beam, the coarse beam spot set comprising representations of spots of the particle beam that approximate a target dose of the particle beam to be applied to the area of the irradiation target to be treated using the particle beam, the minimum dosage comprising a minimum dosage to be applied to the area, and the maximum dosage comprising a maximum dosage to be applied outside of the area;
changing the spots in the coarse beam spot set to more closely approximate the dose distribution of the particle beam;
retrieving at least some of the first information from the library based on the changed spots in the coarse spot beam set;
moving the configurable collimator to the area; and
configuring the leaves and at least one of the carriages in the area based on the retrieved first information to trim the particle beam;
wherein the carriages comprise:
a primary carriage coupled to the leaves to move the leaves relative to the irradiation target in a first dimension relative to the irradiation target that is different from the dimension in which the leaves are extendible and retractable; and
secondary carriages coupled to the primary carriage and to the leaves to move the leaves in a second dimension relative to the irradiation target, the second dimension being the dimension in which the leaves are extendible and retractable.

2. A particle therapy system comprising:
a particle accelerator to output a particle beam for application to an irradiation target;
a configurable collimator comprising (a) sets of parallel leaves that are extendible and retractable in a dimension and (b) carriages coupled to the sets of parallel leaves;
one or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media storing (i) a library containing (a) first information defining positions of the sets of the leaves and (b) a configuration of the carriages, the positions of the sets of leaves being based on which of the leaves are extended and which of leaves are extracted, and (ii) instructions that are executable by one or more processing devices; and
a control system comprising one or more processing devices configured to execute the instructions to perform operations comprising:
receiving, from a treatment planning process, second information comprising a dose distribution for an area of the irradiation target to be treated using the particle beam;
obtaining a coarse beam spot set based on a minimum dosage of the particle beam and a maximum dosage of the particle beam, the coarse beam spot set comprising representations of spots of the particle beam that approximate a target dose of the particle beam to be applied to the area of an irradiation target to be treated using the particle beam, the minimum dosage comprising a minimum dosage to be applied to the area, and the maximum dosage comprising a maximum dosage to be applied outside of the area;
causing the spots in the coarse beam spot set to change to more closely approximate the dose distribution of the particle beam;
retrieving at least some of the first information from the library based on the changed spots in the coarse beam spot set;
controlling the configurable collimator to move to the area; and
controlling the leaves and the carriages to be configured in the area based on the retrieved first information to trim the particle beam;

wherein the carriages comprise:
a primary carriage to move the leaves relative to the irradiation target in a first dimension relative to the irradiation target that is different from the dimension in which the leaves are extendible and retractable; and secondary carriages coupled to the primary carriage to move the leaves in a second dimension relative to the irradiation target, the second dimension being the dimension in which the leaves are extendible and retractable.

3. The particle therapy system of claim 2 , wherein the configurable collimator comprises two sets of the leaves that face each other.

4. The particle therapy system of claim 2 , wherein spots in the coarse beam spot set are defined by geometric features.

5. The particle therapy system of claim 2 , wherein the first information corresponds to spots of the particle beam that are to be formed on the irradiation target.

6. The particle therapy system of claim 2 , wherein the leaves are configurable on a spot-by-spot of the particle beam basis.

7. The particle therapy system of claim 6 , wherein at least two successive spots of the particle beam on the irradiation target have at least one of a different size or a different shape.

8. The particle therapy system of claim 2 , wherein the second dimension comprises movement into, and out of, the area of the irradiation target.

9. The particle therapy system of claim 2 , wherein moving the configurable collimator comprises rotating at least one secondary carriage.

10. The particle therapy system of claim 9 , wherein the leaves comprise two sets of parallel leaves that face each other.

11. The particle therapy system of claim 2 , wherein the control system is configured to control rotation of all or part of the configurable collimator.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein at least two successive spots produced by the particle beam on the irradiation target have at least one of a different size or a different shape.

13. One or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media storing: a library containing first information defining (a) positions of sets of parallel leaves of a configurable collimator that are extendible and retractable in a dimension to produce trimmed spots of a particle beam and (b) a configuration of carriages on the configurable collimator, the positions of the leaves being based on which of the leaves are extended and which of leaves are extracted;
receiving, from a treatment planning process, second information comprising a dose distribution for an area of an irradiation target to be treated using the particle beam;
obtaining a coarse beam spot set based on a minimum dosage of the particle beam and a maximum dosage of the particle beam, the coarse beam spot set comprising representations of spots of the particle beam that approximate a target dose of the particle beam to be applied to the area of the irradiation target to be treated using the particle beam, the minimum dosage comprising a minimum dosage to be applied to the area, and the maximum dosage comprising a maximum dosage to be applied outside of the area;
causing the spots in the coarse beam spot set to change to more closely approximate the dose distribution of the particle beam;
retrieving at least some of the first information from the library based on the changed spots in the coarse beam spot set;
controlling the configurable collimator to move to the area; and
controlling the leaves and at least one of the carriages to be configured in the area based on the retrieved first information to trim the particle beam;
wherein the carriages comprise:
a

Assignees

• Mevion Medical Systems Inc

Inventors

• Cooley James
• Zwart Gerrit Townsend
• Rosenthal Stanley J
• Jones Mark R
• Bouchet Lionel G
• Cessac Robert
• Jachinowski Joseph

Classifications

• H05H2277/10

  Medical devices · CPC title

• H05H2007/045

  for beam bending · CPC title

• H05H2007/043

  for beam focusing · CPC title

• H05H2007/007

  for focusing the beam to irradiation target · CPC title

• H05H2007/002

  for modifying beam trajectory, e.g. gantries · CPC title