Artificial intelligence -- Medical applications

Intracavitary high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy is a form of radiation therapy generally in which a post-surgical tissue margin is treated. The dose gradient of HDR brachytherapy is very steep, and thus small displacements of the applicator, even as small as 1 mm, could potentially cause significant variations of dose which could result in undesired side effects such as overdose of a critical organ. In this retrospective dosimetric study, the variation of dose due to various small range motions of gynecological applicators is investigated. The results show that the implementation of additional immobilization and localization devices along with other safety measures needs to be further investigated.

A detailed dosimetric comparison between Inverse Planning by Simulated Annealing (IPSA) and Dose Points (DP) optimized treatment plans has been performed
for High Dose Rate (HDR) brachytherapy of skin lesions using Freiburg Flap applicator
in order to find out whether or not IPSA offers better clinical dosimetric outcomes for
lesions categorized into four different curvatures. Without compromising target coverage,
IPSA reduced the volume of Planning Target Volume (lesion) that received at least 125%
of the prescription dose on average by 41%. It also reduced the volume of the healthy
skin surrounding the lesion that receives at least 100% of the prescription dose on
average by 42%. IPSA did not show any advantage over DP in sparing normal structures
underlying the lesions treated. Although DP optimization algorithm has been regularly
used at Lynn Cancer Institute for HDR brachytherapy of skin lesions, recent upgrades in IPSA software have made IPSA more amenable to rapid treatment planning and therefore
IPSA can be used either in place of DP or as its alternative.