Dynamic three-dimensional beam modification for radiation therapy
Granted: April 13, 2021
Patent Number:
10974076
A beam modifier shapes the distribution of a dose delivered to a target by a radiation beam emitted from a beam emitter of a radiotherapy device, particularly a beam that delivers a high radiation dose within a single, short period of time (e.g., less than a second). Elements of the beam modifier (e.g., rods) include material that can block or attenuate the beam. The elements can be dynamically and quickly configured to form an opening or transparent area through which a portion of the…
Radiation treatment planning and delivery for moving targets in the heart
Granted: April 13, 2021
Patent Number:
10974075
Method and systems are disclosed for radiating a moving target inside a heart. The method includes acquiring sequential volumetric representations of an area of the heart and defining a target tissue region and/or a radiation sensitive structure region in 3D for a first of the representations. The target tissue region and/or radiation sensitive structure region are identified for another of the representations by an analysis of the area of the heart from the first representation and the…
Multileaf collimator cone enabling stereotactic radiosurgery
Granted: April 13, 2021
Patent Number:
10974071
An apparatus includes a first multileaf collimator comprising a plurality of pairs of beam-blocking leaves each comprising an end portion. The end portions of beam-blocking leaves of two adjacent pairs are configured to collectively form an aperture when the two adjacent pairs of beam-blocking leaves are closed. The aperture may be sized and shaped to allow a radiation beam to pass through for radiosurgery.
Renovascular treatment device, system, and method for radiosurgically alleviating hypertension
Granted: April 13, 2021
Patent Number:
10974069
A radiosurgical method for treating cardiorenal disease of a patient, the method including directing radiosurgery radiation from outside the patient towards one or more target treatment regions encompassing sympathetic ganglia of the patient so as to inhibit the cardiorenal disease. In an exemplary embodiment, the method further includes acquiring three dimensional planning image data encompassing the first and second renal arteries, planning an ionizing radiation treatment of first and…
Color-coded and sized loadable polymeric particles for therapeutic and/or diagnostic applications and methods of preparing and using the same
Granted: April 13, 2021
Patent Number:
10973770
Polymeric particles are provided for use in therapeutic and/or diagnostic procedures. The particles include poly[bis(trifluoroethoxy)phosphazene and/or a derivative thereof which may be present throughout the particles or within an outer coating of the particles. The particles may also include a core having a hydrogel formed from an acrylic-based polymer. Such particles may be provided to a user in specific selected sizes to allow for selective embolization of certain sized blood vessels…
Automatic exposure control for x-ray imaging
Granted: April 13, 2021
Patent Number:
10973488
In an x-ray imaging method, the acquisition of a signal image is split off into acquisition of two or more subimages or frames. The first subimage may be acquired with an exposure of a low dose followed by a readout cycle. The dose of the exposure for acquiring the first subimage can be chosen such that it is below the default dose for a particular anatomy. The first subimage may be used to calculate or estimate the parameters of exposure for acquiring a second or subsequent images…
Adaptive image filtering for volume reconstruction using partial image data
Granted: April 6, 2021
Patent Number:
10967202
A method of generating an image synthesis process is disclosed, where the image synthesis process improves image quality of degraded volumetric images. In the method, a machine learning process is trained in a supervised learning framework as the image synthesis process. In the supervised learning process, a lower-quality partial-data reconstruction of a target volume is employed as an input object in the supervised learning process and a higher-quality full data reconstruction of the…
Single-pass imaging and radiation treatment delivery via an extended rotation gantry
Granted: March 30, 2021
Patent Number:
10960232
A radiation therapy system delivers radiation treatment over a 360-degree arc and performs a prepended imaging process, in a single pass, via an extended rotation gantry. While rotating the gantry in one direction about a bore of the radiation system, the radiation system generates multiple images of a target volume disposed in the bore using an imaging X-ray source mounted on the gantry. Then, while continuing to rotate the gantry in the same direction, the radiation system delivers a…
Radiation therapy systems and methods
Granted: March 30, 2021
Patent Number:
10960231
A radiation therapy system includes an accelerator and beam transport system that generates a beam of particles. The accelerator and beam transport system guides the beam on a path and into a nozzle that is operable for aiming the beam toward an object. The nozzle includes a scanning magnet operable for steering the beam toward different locations within the object, and also includes a beam energy adjuster configured to adjust the beam by, for example, placing different thicknesses of…
Automatic quality checks for radiotherapy contouring
Granted: March 23, 2021
Patent Number:
10957046
Systems, devices, methods, and computer processing products for automatically checking for errors in segmentation (contouring) using heuristic and/or statistical evaluation methods.
Beam angle optimization for external beam radiation therapy using sectioning
Granted: March 16, 2021
Patent Number:
10946217
Methods of beam angle optimization for intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) treatment include determining beam's eye view (BEV) regions and a BEV region connectivity manifold by evaluating dose response of each region of interest for each vertex in a delivery coordinate space (DCS). The information contained in the BEV regions and the BEV region connectivity manifold is used to guide an optimizer to find optimal field geometries in the IMRT treatment. To improve the visibility of…
Incorporating multiple targets in trajectory optimization for radiotherapy treatment planning
Granted: March 16, 2021
Patent Number:
10946216
Methods of treatment trajectory optimization for radiotherapy treatment of multiple targets include determining beam's eye view (BEV) regions and a BEV region connectivity manifold for each target group of a plurality of target groups separately. The information contained in the BEV regions and the BEV region connectivity manifolds for all target groups is used to guide an optimizer to find optimal treatment trajectories. To improve the visibility of insufficiently exposed voxels of…
Systems, methods, and devices for radiation beam alignment and radiation beam measurements using electronic portal imaging devices
Granted: March 9, 2021
Patent Number:
10940333
Systems and methods for using electronic portal imaging devices (EPIDs) as absolute radiation beam measuring devices and as radiation beam alignment devices without implementation of elaborate and complex calibration procedures.
Dosimetric projection of collimator geometry
Granted: March 9, 2021
Patent Number:
10940330
A method of calculating radiation dose includes dosimetric projection of a collimator geometry. The method includes defining a three-dimensional (3D) geometry of a collimating device which defines an aperture configured to allow a radiation beam passing through, projecting the collimating device along the radiation beam into a two-dimensional (2D) geometry in a plane, calculating dosimetric opacity values of the collimating device at locations adjacent to the aperture based on the 3D…
Systems and methods for three-dimensional visualization of deviation of volumetric structures with colored surface structures
Granted: February 23, 2021
Patent Number:
10930058
Embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to methods and computer systems for converting datasets into three-dimensional (“3D”) mesh surface visualization, displaying the mesh surface on a computer display, comparing two three-dimensional mesh surface structures by blending two primary different primary colors to create a secondary color, and computing the distance between two three-dimensional mesh surface structures converted from two closely-matched datasets. For…
Energy degrader having layer structure parallel to the incident beam direction for radiation therapy system
Granted: February 23, 2021
Patent Number:
10926103
An energy degrading device for attenuating energy of a particle beam with reduced emittance growth. An energy degrader comprises an emittance control material that can preferentially scatter the beam particles that is incident on a surface with a shallow angle. In one approach, the energy degrader may include alternating layers of a low-Z and a high-Z material, wherein the low Z material serves to attenuate energy of the beam particles by virtue of scattering and the high Z material…
Computation of radiating particle and wave distributions using a generalized discrete field constructed from representative ray sets
Granted: February 16, 2021
Patent Number:
10921756
The present system and method for simulating particles and waves is useful for calculations involving nuclear and full spectrum radiation transport, quantum particle transport, plasma transport and charged particle transport. The invention provides a mechanism for creating accurate invariants for embedding in general three-dimensional problems and describes means by which a series of simple single collision interaction finite elements can be extended to formulate a complex…
Flash therapy treatment planning and oncology information system having dose rate prescription and dose rate mapping
Granted: February 16, 2021
Patent Number:
10918886
A computing system comprising a central processing unit (CPU), and memory coupled to the CPU and having stored therein instructions that, when executed by the computing system, cause the computing system to execute operations to generate a radiation treatment plan. The operations include accessing a minimum prescribed dose to be delivered into and across the target, determining a number of beams and directions of the beams, and determining a beam energy for each of the beams, wherein the…
Systems, methods and devices for automated target volume generation
Granted: February 16, 2021
Patent Number:
10918885
Systems and method for automatically generating structures, such as target volumes, in a treatment image using structure-guided deformation to propagate the structures from a planning image onto the subsequently acquired treatment image.
Method and apparatus pertaining to radiation-treatment plan optimization
Granted: February 9, 2021
Patent Number:
10912951
A radiation-treatment plan that comprises a plurality of dose-delivery fractions can be optimized by using fraction dose objectives and at least one other, different dose objective. This use of fraction dose objectives can comprise accumulating doses delivered in previous dose-delivery fractions. The other, different dose objective can comprise a remaining total dose objective, a predictive dose objective, or some other dose objective of choice. An existing radiation-treatment plan…
