Strategies for Radiation Therapy Treatment Planning

Strategies for Radiation Therapy Treatment Planning provides radiation oncologists, physicists, and dosimetrists with a step-by-step guide to implementing external beam treatment plans that meet clinical requirements for each major disease site. As a companion book to the Handbook of Treatment Planning in Radiation Oncology 2nd Edition, this book focuses on the technical aspects of treatment planning and the major challenges in creating highly conformal dose distributions, referenced to as treatment plans, for external beam radiotherapy. To overcome challenges associated with each step, leading experts at the Cleveland Clinic have consolidated their knowledge and experience of treatment planning techniques, potential pitfalls, and other difficulties to develop quality plans across the gamut of clinical scenarios in radiation therapy. The book begins with an overview of external beam treatment planning principles, inverse planning and advanced planning tools, and a chapter describing all components in simulation and verification. Following these introductory chapters, chapters comprise disease-site examples including central nervous system, head and neck, breast, thoracic, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, gynecologic, lymphoma, and soft tissue sarcoma. The book concludes with expert guidance on planning for pediatric cancers and how to tailor palliative plans. Essential for all radiation therapy team members, including trainees, this book is for those who wish to learn or improve their treatment planning skills and understand the different treatment planning processes, plan evaluation, and patient setup. Key Features: Provides basic principles of treatment planning Contains step-by-step, illustrated descriptions of the treatment planning process Discusses the pros and cons of advanced treatment planning tools such as auto-planning, knowledge based planning, and multi-criteria based planning Describes each primary treatment site from simulation, patient immobilizati