TY - JOUR
T1 - Keeping your best options open with AI-based treatment planning in prostate and cervix brachytherapy
AU - Dickhoff, Leah R.M.
AU - Scholman, Renzo J.
AU - Barten, Danique L.J.
AU - Kerkhof, Ellen M.
AU - Roorda, Jelmen J.
AU - Velema, Laura A.
AU - Stalpers, Lukas J.A.
AU - Pieters, Bradley R.
AU - Bosman, Peter A.N.
AU - Alderliesten, Tanja
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - PURPOSE: Without a clear definition of an optimal treatment plan, no optimization model can be perfect. Therefore, instead of automatically finding a single “optimal” plan, finding multiple, yet different near-optimal plans, can be an insightful approach to support radiation oncologists in finding the plan they are looking for. METHODS AND MATERIALS: BRIGHT is a flexible AI-based optimization method for brachytherapy treatment planning that has already been shown capable of finding high-quality plans that trade-off target volume coverage and healthy tissue sparing. We leverage the flexibility of BRIGHT to find plans with similar dose-volume criteria, yet different dose distributions. We further describe extensions that facilitate fast plan adaptation should planning aims need to be adjusted, and straightforwardly allow incorporating hospital-specific aims besides standard protocols. RESULTS: Results are obtained for prostate (n = 12) and cervix brachytherapy (n = 36). We demonstrate the possible differences in dose distribution for optimized plans with equal dose-volume criteria. We furthermore demonstrate that adding hospital-specific aims enables adhering to hospital-specific practice while still being able to automatically create cervix plans that more often satisfy the EMBRACE-II protocol than clinical practice. Finally, we illustrate the feasibility of fast plan adaptation. CONCLUSIONS: Methods such as BRIGHT enable new ways to construct high-quality treatment plans for brachytherapy while offering new insights by making explicit the options one has. In particular, it becomes possible to present to radiation oncologists a manageable set of alternative plans that, from an optimization perspective are equally good, yet differ in terms of coverage-sparing trade-offs and shape of the dose distribution.
AB - PURPOSE: Without a clear definition of an optimal treatment plan, no optimization model can be perfect. Therefore, instead of automatically finding a single “optimal” plan, finding multiple, yet different near-optimal plans, can be an insightful approach to support radiation oncologists in finding the plan they are looking for. METHODS AND MATERIALS: BRIGHT is a flexible AI-based optimization method for brachytherapy treatment planning that has already been shown capable of finding high-quality plans that trade-off target volume coverage and healthy tissue sparing. We leverage the flexibility of BRIGHT to find plans with similar dose-volume criteria, yet different dose distributions. We further describe extensions that facilitate fast plan adaptation should planning aims need to be adjusted, and straightforwardly allow incorporating hospital-specific aims besides standard protocols. RESULTS: Results are obtained for prostate (n = 12) and cervix brachytherapy (n = 36). We demonstrate the possible differences in dose distribution for optimized plans with equal dose-volume criteria. We furthermore demonstrate that adding hospital-specific aims enables adhering to hospital-specific practice while still being able to automatically create cervix plans that more often satisfy the EMBRACE-II protocol than clinical practice. Finally, we illustrate the feasibility of fast plan adaptation. CONCLUSIONS: Methods such as BRIGHT enable new ways to construct high-quality treatment plans for brachytherapy while offering new insights by making explicit the options one has. In particular, it becomes possible to present to radiation oncologists a manageable set of alternative plans that, from an optimization perspective are equally good, yet differ in terms of coverage-sparing trade-offs and shape of the dose distribution.
KW - Automated treatment planning
KW - Artificial intelligence
KW - Multi-objective optimization
KW - Cervical cancer
KW - Prostate cancer
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85184057076&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.brachy.2023.10.005
DO - 10.1016/j.brachy.2023.10.005
M3 - Review article
SN - 1538-4721
VL - 23
SP - 188
EP - 198
JO - Brachytherapy
JF - Brachytherapy
IS - 2
ER -