US 12,138,481 B2
Fast generation of multi-leaf collimator (MLC) openings using hierarchical multi-resolution matching
Christoph Neukirchen, Aachen (DE); Alfonso Agatino Isola, Eindhoven (NL); Harald Sepp Heese, Hamburg (DE); Torbjoern Vik, Hamburg (DE); Rolf Jürgen Weese, Norderstedt (DE); and Matthieu Frédéric Bal, Geldrop (NL)
Assigned to Elekta Inc., Atlanta, GA (US)
Appl. No. 17/601,121
Filed by Elekta Inc., Atlanta, GA (US)
PCT Filed Mar. 27, 2020, PCT No. PCT/EP2020/058636
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Oct. 4, 2021,
PCT Pub. No. WO2020/201037, PCT Pub. Date Oct. 8, 2020.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/829,066, filed on Apr. 4, 2019.
Prior Publication US 2022/0168592 A1, Jun. 2, 2022
Int. Cl. A61N 5/10 (2006.01); G16H 20/40 (2018.01); G16H 30/20 (2018.01)
CPC A61N 5/1036 (2013.01) [A61N 5/1047 (2013.01); G16H 20/40 (2018.01); G16H 30/20 (2018.01)] 19 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A device for optimizing a radiation therapy plan for delivering therapeutic radiation to a patient using a therapeutic radiation source while modulated by a multi-leaf collimator (MLC), the device comprising:
at least one electronic processor connected to a radiation therapy device; and
a non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions readable and executable by the at least one electronic processor to perform a radiation therapy plan optimization method, the method comprising:
optimizing MLC settings of the MLC respective to an objective function wherein the MLC settings define MLC leaf tip positions for a plurality of rows of MLC leaf pairs at a plurality of control points (CPs),
wherein: the optimizing is performed in two or more iterations with a resolution of the MLC settings increasing in successive iterations; and the optimizing comprises reducing a travel range of the leaf tip positions and increasing a resolution of the leaf tip positions within the reduced travel range in the successive iterations.