title: Image display for collision avoidance of radiation therapy: treatment planning.
abstract: Patient treatment in a medical linear accelerator is characterized by many angular and translational movements of the gantry and couch. The direction and orientation of each treatment beam is specified by a set of gantry, turntable, and collimator angles. It is possible that some selected treatment field configurations will result in gantry/couch or gantry/patient collisions that remain undetected during the treatment planning process. In this work, a digital camera has been used to record all the workable gantry/ patient set-up images, and a Windows programming language is used to edit and display these images on a personal computer for the treatment planner to screen the treatment plans. These graphical displays enable the planner to be aware of any potential collision hazards by an actual visualization of each selected gantry/turntable or gantry/patient angle configuration.
authors.affiliation: Cancer Center and Cancer Research Group, Veterans General Hospital-Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China.
authors.forename: M M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Chao
authors.forename: L S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Chao
authors.forename: Y J
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: C M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Hsieh
authors.forename: S C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Liou
authors.forename: Y L
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: S H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Yen
mesh_terms: D000056:Accident Prevention; D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D006258:Head and Neck Neoplasms / Q000532:radiotherapy*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D010315:Particle Accelerators; D011880:Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012399:Rotation; D017751:Safety Management / Q000379:methods*