Planning optimized for the treatment of cancer with radiation therapy

• Grant number: 08/04541-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2008
• End date: July 31, 2009
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Physics
• Principal Investigator: Helenice de Oliveira Florentino Silva
• Grantee: David Moreira Fernandes
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IBB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil

Abstract

A planning is considered optimal for the treatment of a patient when all parameters that involve the treatment, being physical or biological, were investigated and adjusted individually for the patient, considering the kind and the localization of tumor, worrying about the elimination of the cancer without damaging healthy tissues of the treated region, mainly the organs of risk because they are, in general, very sensible to radiation. In the conventional planning, without the use of optimization techniques, the most common practice consists in deliver the greatest radiation as possible in the tumor. Although, there are two reasons to avoid this procedure: first of all is that high levels of radiation may cause a great sum of necrosis and the human body has difficulty on eliminating a great volume of dead tissue. Second of all is that infected cells are scattered among healthy tissues, further a lethal dose distributed uniformly in the region of tumor is crucial for the planning treatment s success. In the optimized planning, the deposited dose over the irradiated tissue it shows potentially concentrated in regions of interest, avoiding considerably the healthy tissues regions and assuring a better result for the therapy. A primer work involving this theme was researched by the candidate as a project of scientific initiation (supported by FAPESP, Process Number: 05/56251-5), longing the acknowledgment of radiation therapy and the study of linear programming models for obtaining optimized plannings for cancer treatment by radiotherapy. This research had significant success, including many works presented in congresses and also getting the honor roll mention premium in a very important congress in the area. It is also being sent a work for possible publication in monitored periodic. The goal of this project is to continue the research. For this purpose, it will be made some refinements in the studied models and also it will be observed real cases of cancer treatment by radiation therapy with the intuit of making comparisons of the obtained results between the complete treatment planning in radiotherapy of a patient obtained in conventional way and a treatment planning of the same patient obtained using mathematical models of optimization, analyzing the viability and the conditions of use of such methods for the creation of optimal plannings for real cases. (AU)