Geometric Problems in Radiosurgery, Radiation Therapy, and Other Medical Applications

University Of Notre Dame, Notre Dame IN

Investigators

Abstract

This project is on the design, analysis, and implementation of algorithmic techniques for solving geometric problems that arise in radiosurgery, radiation therapy, and other medical applications. Radiosurgery is a minimally invasive surgical procedure that uses a set of focused beams of radiation to destroy tumors. A key step in radiotherapy and radiosurgery is to develop a treatment plan that defines the best radiation beam arrangements and time settings to destroy the target tumor without harming the surrounding healthy tissues. At the core of radiation treatment planning is a set of substantially non-trivial geometric optimization problems. We seek to investigate a number of geometric optimization problems arising in radiation treatment planning, such as beam selection (including beam probing and its many variations), surgical navigation and routing, sphere packing, beam shaping, image segmentation, shape approximation, and beam source path planning. This interdisciplinary research will draw diverse techniques from computational geometry and other theoretical areas, such as operations research and combinatorial optimization. Furthermore, this research will provide a rich source of problems and new challenges that prod further development of algorithmic techniques in these theoretical areas. The planned research includes an important experimental component. Educational activities on course development and student training in the interdisciplinary area of computational medicine are also part of the project.