Radiotherapy treatment planning with dose volume constraints by linear programming approach

Optimization has become an imperative tool in treatment scheduling for cancer radiation therapy. It may be used to determine beam weights, beam directions, and appropriate use of beam modifiers such as wedges and blocks, with the aim of delivering a required dose to the tumor while sparing critical structures and normal tissue in close proximity. Linear programming formulations are a core computation in many approaches to treatment planning, because of the abundance of highly developed linear programming software. Furthermore the choice of formulation, algorithm, and pivot rule that perform paramount computations are sometimes not obvious, and the software’s default choices are sometimes pitiable. Here a number of linear programming formulations of treatment planning problem with dose volume constraints, conclusions are drawn about the formulations and variants.