Planning for camera-guided robotic radiosurgery

Radiosurgery is a treatment for brain tumors and other lesions which employ s a moving beam of photon radiation. In robotic radiosurgery, the radiation source is moved by a six degree-of-freedom robotic arm. A treatment planni ng system for robotic radiosurgery was developed. This planning system comb ines collision avoidance techniques and geometric algorithms for finding ap propriate robot paths and beam activation profiles, The following design go als characterize our application: 1) ability to generate conformal three-dimensional (3-D) dose distributions ; 2) transparency of the planning process; 3) full use of the motion flexibility provided by the robotic arm. The new planning system is in clinical use in several leading medical insti tutions. Results obtained from studies suggest that highly conformal distri butions can be generated in a very effective way.