title: Analyzing the quality robustness of chemotherapy plans with respect to model uncertainties.
abstract: Mathematical models of chemotherapy planning problems contain various biomedical parameters, whose values are difficult to quantify and thus subject to some uncertainty. This uncertainty propagates into the therapy plans computed on these models, which poses the question of robustness to the expected therapy quality. This work introduces a combined approach for analyzing the quality robustness of plans in terms of dosing levels with respect to model uncertainties in chemotherapy planning. It uses concepts from multi-criteria decision making for studying parameters related to the balancing between the different therapy goals, and concepts from sensitivity analysis for the examination of parameters describing the underlying biomedical processes and their interplay. This approach allows for a profound assessment of a therapy plan, how stable its quality is with respect to parametric changes in the used mathematical model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Optimization, Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITWM), Kaiserslautern, Germany. Electronic address: anna.hoffmann@itwm.fraunhofer.de.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hoffmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Optimization, Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITWM), Kaiserslautern, Germany.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Scherrer
authors.affiliation: Department of Optimization, Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITWM), Kaiserslautern, Germany.
authors.forename: Karl-Heinz
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Küfer
mesh_terms: D004358:Drug Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy*; D035501:Uncertainty
keywords: Chemotherapy planning; Elasticity analysis; Multi-criteria decision making; Nonlinear optimization; Ordinary differential equations; Sensitivity analysis