Radiation treatment planning using a microcomputer

The radiation treatment planning requires a lenght manipulation of data from isodose charts to obtain the best irradiation technique. Over the past 25 years this tedious operation has been replaced by computerized methods. These can reduce the working time by at least 20 times. It is being developed at the Biomedical Engineering Center a software to generate a polychromatic image of dose distribution. By means of a digitizing board, the patient contour and the beam data are transfered to the computer and stored as polinomial and Fourier series respectively. To calculate the dose distribution, the irradiated region is represented by a variable size bidimensional dot matrix. The dose at each point is calculated by correcting and adding the stored data for each beam. An algorithm for color definition according to the dose intensity was developed to display on a computer monitor the resultant matrix. A hard copy can be obtained be means of a six color plotter. (author)