Heidelberg 2006 – scientific programme

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ST: Strahlen- und Medizinphysik

ST 6: Strahlentherapie mit schnellen Ionen I

ST 6.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 14, 2006, 10:40–10:50, D

Rapid Calculation of Biological Effects and Multifield Treatment Planning for Ion Beams — •Michael Kraemer, Michael Scholz, and Alexander Schmidt — GSI Darmstadt, Planckstr. 1

Since 1997 a radiotherapy pilot project is running at GSI (Darmstadt) treating tumour patients with scanned beams of fast carbon ions. Treatments are planned with the dedicated TRiP98 software package. This includes modelling not only the physical properties of ion-matter interaction but also the radiobiological effects in complex irradiation configurations. For this purpose an implementation of the Local Effect Model (LEM) is incorporated, which unfortunately needs a lot of computing resources when applied in sophisticated treatment optimizations. It can be shown, however, that a suitable approximation vastly reduces computing time without sacrificing accuracy. As a consequence, simultaneous optimization of multiple ion fields is now feasible within reasonable turn-around times. This method allows significantly improved sparing of organs-at-risk. Since it is a good idea not to rely solely on computer calculations, patient-like irradiation configurations are verified experimentally by means of biological dosimetry. The method is not restricted to carbon ions but can be used for other ion species as well. Hence the TRiP98 software package can be used as a universal ion planning tool to allow fair comparisons of ion beam therapy with competing techniques like e.g. photon IMRT.