Method and apparatus for using a designated patient structure as an area to be masked from radiation
Granted: June 11, 2019
Patent Number:
10315045
A control circuit provides a user with an opportunity to designate one or more patient structures for a particular patient that are to be protected from radiation. When optimizing a radiation-treatment plan for that patient, then, the control circuit uses the designated patient structure(s) as an area to be masked from radiation during administration of the radiation-treatment plan. By one approach the aforementioned opportunity to designate patient structures as being designated patient…
Mechanism for advanced structure generation and editing
Granted: June 4, 2019
Patent Number:
10311585
Embodiments of the present invention are directed to methods and a mechanism for manipulating images generated by radiotherapy machines used in radiation diagnostic and treatment applications. In one embodiment, a method is provided for intelligent automatic propagation of manual or automatic contouring across linked (e.g., registered) images and image data sets by acquiring one or more images of one or more image data sets; determining the correlation between the images with respect to…
Radiation therapy systems and methods
Granted: June 4, 2019
Patent Number:
10307618
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…
Optimization of radiation treatment plans for optimal treatment time in external-beam radiation treatments
Granted: June 4, 2019
Patent Number:
10307615
An optimized radiation treatment plan may be developed in which the total monitor unit (MU) count is taken into account. A planner may specify a maximum treatment time. An optimization algorithm may convert the specified maximum treatment time to a maximum total MU count, which is then used as a constraint in the optimization process. A cost function for the optimization algorithm may include a term that penalizes any violation of the upper constraint for the MU count.
Cyclotron RF resonator tuning with asymmetrical fixed tuner
Granted: May 28, 2019
Patent Number:
10306746
Embodiments of the present invention disclose methods and systems for performing particle acceleration using a cyclotron RF resonator with an asymmetrical fixed tuner. A cyclotron RF resonator includes a single shorting plate tuner inside and a fixed short stem, and does not require top-bottom mirror symmetry. Small movements in relation to the wavelengths of the maximum acceleration voltage is bound by the capacitance of the accelerating surfaces. As such, the resonator may perform…
Irradiation of moving target using particle therapy system
Granted: May 21, 2019
Patent Number:
10293185
In an irradiation method, an irradiation plan for irradiating a target volume in phases of motion is provided to a particle therapy system. The particle therapy system comprises a beam delivery device operable to scan a pencil beam of particles over the target volume. The irradiation plan comprises a first field for irradiating the target volume in a first phase of motion and a second field for irradiating the target volume in a second phase of motion. Motion of a tracking device or…
Delivery catheter for and method of delivering implant, for example, bronchoscopically implanting a marker in a lung
Granted: May 21, 2019
Patent Number:
10293135
Systems and methods for treating a lung of a lung of a patient. One embodiment of a method comprises positioning a leadless marker in the lung of the patient relative to the target, and collecting position data of the marker. This method further comprises determining the location of the marker in an external reference frame outside the patient based on the collected position data, and providing an objective output in the external reference frame that is responsive to movement of the…
Automatice exposure control for x-ray imaging
Granted: May 14, 2019
Patent Number:
10285661
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…
Automatic quality checks for radiotherapy contouring
Granted: May 14, 2019
Patent Number:
10290093
Systems, devices, methods, and computer processing products for automatically checking for errors in segmentation (contouring) using heuristic and/or statistical evaluation methods.
Systems, methods, and devices for real-time treatment verification using an electronic portal imaging device
Granted: May 14, 2019
Patent Number:
10286229
A radiation dose received by a patient from a radiation therapy system can be verified by acquiring a cine stream of image frames from an electronic portal imaging device (EPID) that is arranged to detect radiation exiting the patient during irradiation. The cine stream of EPID image frames can be processed in real-time to form exit images providing absolute dose measurements at the EPID (dose-to-water values), which is representative of the characteristics of the radiation received by…
Method and apparatus pertaining to radiation-treatment plan optimization
Granted: May 7, 2019
Patent Number:
10279197
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…
Mechanism for advanced structure generation and editing
Granted: April 30, 2019
Patent Number:
10275895
Embodiments of the present invention are directed to methods and a mechanism for manipulating images generated by radiotherapy machines used in radiation diagnostic and treatment applications. In one embodiment, a method is provided for intelligent automatic propagation of manual or automatic contouring across linked (e.g., registered) images and image data sets by acquiring one or more images of one or more image data sets; determining the correlation between the images with respect to…
Collision avoidance for radiation therapy
Granted: April 30, 2019
Patent Number:
10272265
An outline of at least a patient on a patient support is determined. Based on at least one image of the patient, a plurality of orientations of the patient support and of at least one device are determined. The at least one device is capable of delivering a radiation treatment to the patient or of performing imaging associated with the radiation treatment. Based on the outline and the plurality of orientations of the patient support and of the at least one device, a clearance zone that…
Generating time-efficient treatment field trajectories for external-beam radiation treatments
Granted: April 30, 2019
Patent Number:
10272264
In a radiation treatment plan that includes a plurality of treatment fields of multiple treatment modalities, such as IMRT modality and dynamic treatment path modality (e.g., VMAT and conformal arc therapy), an optimized spatial point sequence may be determined that optimizes the total treatment time, which includes both the beam-on time (i.e., during the delivery of radiation dose) and the beam-off time (i.e., during transitions between consecutive treatment fields). The result is a…
Knowledge-based automatic image segmentation
Granted: April 23, 2019
Patent Number:
10269122
A method for medical image segmentation. The method includes accessing and updating a knowledge-base in accordance with embodiments of the present invention. The techniques include: receiving a medical image and computing a sparse landmark signature based on the medical image content. Next, a knowledge-base is searched for representative matches to form a base set, wherein the base set comprises a plurality of reference image sets. A portion of the plurality of reference image sets of…
Time-resolved pre-treatment portal dosimetry systems, devices, and methods
Granted: April 23, 2019
Patent Number:
10265546
Systems, devices, and methods for pre-treatment verification of radiation dose delivery in arc-based radiation therapy devices using a time-dependent gamma evaluation method.
Prefabricated modular radiation therapy vault design
Granted: April 23, 2019
Patent Number:
10265232
A radiotherapy center includes a treatment room and a radiation machine located in the treatment room. The treatment room is constructed with materials comprising a plurality of prefabricated, modular radiation shielding blocks. The radiotherapy center may further include a plurality of functional rooms adjacent to the treatment room. The plurality of functional rooms may be constructed from a plurality of prefabricated modules. The plurality of functional rooms may be arranged in a…
Radiation treatment systems
Granted: April 16, 2019
Patent Number:
10258812
Disclosed are radiation treatment systems with enhanced control architectures that enable more complex treatment plans to be implemented, and radiation treatment systems with enhanced resistance to the effect of neutrons. An exemplary control architectures comprises: a digital packet network; a supervisor electrically coupled to the digital packet network and having a treatment plan; and a plurality of nodes, each node coupled to digital packet network and controlling one or more…
Apparatus and method using automatic generation of a base dose
Granted: April 9, 2019
Patent Number:
10252081
A control circuit forms a radiation therapy treatment plan by automatically generating a base dose that references dosing information from multiple sources (such as multiple information sources) and then using that base dose to optimize a radiation therapy treatment plan. That radiation therapy treatment plan is then used to administer radiation therapy to a patient. That automatically generated base dose can represent any or all of earlier radiation therapy treatments for the patient, a…
Systems, methods, and devices for high-energy irradiation
Granted: April 9, 2019
Patent Number:
10252083
A high-energy radiation treatment system can comprise a laser-driven accelerator system, a patient monitoring system, and a control system. The laser-driven accelerator system, such as a laser-driven plasma accelerator or a laser-driven dielectric microstructure accelerator, can be constructed to irradiate a patient disposed on a patient support. The patient monitoring system can be configured to detect and track a location or movement of a treatment volume within the patient. The…
