RAPT: A parallel radiotherapy treatment planning code

Abstract

We describe the RAPT prototype software package for stereotactic radiotherapy treatmentplanning, which has been developed as part of the ESPRIT EUROPORT project for creating parallel high-performance computing (HPC) versions of commercially significant codes.

This paper focuses on the parallel high-performance simulation kernel, and describesits implementation, and performance measurements forboth accuracy and computation time. These show that a fully 3-D Monte-Carlo simulation, taking account of tissue inhomogeneities can be performed in around 1 hour an acceptable delay for clinical use.

Every year, 700,000 Europeans die of cancer, and 1.2 million contract the disease. About a quarter of the new cases each year receive radiosurgery, but 20 per cent of these treatments fail either because the tumours are not precisely located, or the irradiation does not reach every part of them. By making available an accurate simulation on a platform which is affordable by a typical, medium-sized hospital radiotherapy department, RAPT has the potential to improve treatment in many of these cases, and so to make a direct impact on patient care.