PhD defence B.W.K. (Bas) Schipaanboord

Dissertation in short:

Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT) is a radiotherapy approach in which high radiation doses are delivered to the tumors in a limited number of daily fractions (typically 3-5 fractions). High-precision dose delivery, generally based on image-guidance, is required to limit dose delivery to healthy tissue as much as possible. The CyberKnife® robotic radiotherapy device is a system that can deliver SBRT and  allows for easy delivery of (non-coplanar) beam directions, without the need of manual couch shifts. High-quality radiotherapy dose distributions can be delivered using the CyberKnife, with excellent clinical outcomes (Fuller et al., 2018, Meier et al., 2018, van der Voort van Zyp et al., 2009). However, the enhanced degrees of freedom of fully non-coplanar robotic radiotherapy increases the complexity of finding optimal patient-specific beam angles and beam segments. This makes it more difficult to consistently generate high-quality treatment plans, especially under clinical circumstances with a variety of planner skill-sets and planning time constraints. The aim of this thesis was to develop and validate novel, fully automated treatment planning solutions for robotic radiotherapy, with emphases on clinical deliverability of generated treatment plans and on optimization of beam angles.