A rule-based system proposal to aid in the evaluation and decision-making in external beam radiation treatment planning

TL;DR

This paper proposes a rule-based software system to assist in evaluating and decision-making for external beam radiotherapy treatment plans, aiming to improve accuracy and support less experienced oncologists.

Contribution

It introduces a hybrid data-oriented rule engine for assessing 3D conformal radiotherapy plans, enhancing decision support in treatment planning.

Findings

Prototype system concept presented

Initial validation shows potential for improved plan evaluation

Supports less experienced oncologists in complex decision-making

Abstract

As part of a plan launched by the Ministry of Health of Brazil to increase the availability of linear accelerators for radiotherapy treatment for the whole country, for which Varian Medical Systems company has won the bidding, a technical cooperation agreement was signed inviting Brazilian Scientific and Technological Institutions to participate in a technology transfer program. As a result, jointly, the Eldorado Research Institute and the Center for Biomedical Engineering of the University of Campinas presents in this work, the concepts behind of a proposed rule engine to aid in the evaluation and decision-making in radiotherapy treatment planning. Normally, the determination of the radiation dose for a given patient is a complex and intensive procedure, which requires a lot of domain knowledge and subjective experience from the oncologists' team. In order to help them in this complex task, and additionally, provide an auxiliary tool for less experienced oncologists, it is presented a project conception of a software system that will make use of a hybrid data-oriented approach. The proposed rule engine will apply both inference mechanism and expression evaluation to verify and accredit the quality of an external beam radiation treatment plan by considering, at first, the 3D-conformal radiotherapy (3DCRT) technique.