Design a Time-Efficient Proton Arc Treatment System Controller

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

6-2024

Publication Title

International Journal of Particle Therapy

Abstract

Background: Proton arc therapy enables the continuous delivery of proton beams while rotating the gantry. One of the critical components in the proton arc system is the controller's design, which decides the irradiation sequence and gantry rotation speed. Purpose This study aims to develop a novel system controller by optimizing the gantry rotation speed and control point connection in order to deliver the proton arc plans efficiently. Method This time-efficient proton arc system controller (controller-time-efficient) aims at optimizing the overall efficiency within tolerance windows, ensuring feasibility by adjusting the speed between tolerance windows. It first calculates the maximum average speed of each tolerance window. Then, the maximum speed to enter and exit the tolerance window can be decided by minimizing the speed while delivery and maintaining the same average speed within the tolerance window as the maximum average speed. After that, an optimal schedule between each window can be calculated by accelerating to the maximum speed allowed between adjacent windows and then decelerating to the entering speed of the next tolerance window. Five different disease sites e.g., liver, head neck, intracranial, lung, and prostate cancer cases, were used for testing purposes. As a benchmark, the plans were also simulated with the first prototype proton arc system controller (controller-prototype). Total dynamic delivery time, statice delivery time, lost time [Lost time = (Dynamic delivery time – static delivery time)/ static delivery time[LZ1]], and gantry speed were compared between the controller-time-efficient and controller-prototype. Result: The new controller-time-efficient significantly reduced the dynamic delivery time by maintaining the highest possible speed within each tolerance window given by static delivery time and tolerance window size compared to the controller-prototype across all the disease sites. The lost time is reduced from 88.8±53.2% via the controller-prototype, to 20.5±8.0% for the controller-time-efficient (P<0.05). Conclusion: We developed a novel proton arc gantry system controller that can significantly improve the treatment delivery efficiency of proton arc therapy within the mechanical limitation. Table 1: Summary of static irradiation time, total dynamic delivery time, and lost time.

Volume

12

Issue

Suppl

First Page

7

Last Page

8

Comments

62nd Annual Conference of the Particle Therapy Cooperative Group (PTCOG), June10-15, 2024, Singapore.

DOI

10.1016/j.ijpt.2024.100127

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