A versatile system for three-dimensional radiation dose computation and display, RTP.

Abstract The Radiation Treatment Planning System (RTP System) is designed to give the radiotherapist and radiophysicist maximum versatility in calculating and displaying dose distribution throughout the irradiated three-dimensional target volume of the patient. This system can compute dose distributions for treatment plans involving either fixed or moving beams. The fields may be arbitrarily located in space and the dose distribution may be corrected for curvature heterogeneity, wedges, compensators, or blocks. A variety of displays may be produced which enables the therapist to visualize the dose distributions and the various patient structures. Displays may be obtained in any desired plane or slice through the patient. The system is designed to easily interface with virtually any type of input/output device. In particular, the system is designed so that it may be used either interactively, by a user at a console such as a teletype or CRT terminal, or remotely, as an ordinary batch program. The RTP System is not limited to any particular source of ionizing radiation or specific method of calculation. In order to allow the use of any quality of radiation, the computing part of the system is in a separate module (as is true also for the other parts). At present the calculation for dose values is done through the equation developed by Sterling et al., which has been extended to cover the following 60 Co machines with acceptable accuracy: Eldorado A, Theratron F, Eldorado 8, and Theratron 80. Methods of calculation are being developed for other machines (especially linear accelerators) and will become available presently. The RTP System was developed under a grant from the National Cancer Institute (CA10208) and may be obtained without cost by request to the authors.