Intuitive navigation in the targeting of radiation therapy treatment beams

Abstract

This research focused on the possible benefits to be gained from using the intuitive navigation made possible by head-mounted displays (HMDs) in the targeting of radiation therapy treatment beams. A tumor surrounded by various types of healthy tissue can present a very complex 3-D situation which must be thoroughly understood for effective treatment to be possible. Conventional 2-D treatment planning suffers from reliance on 2-D diagnostic imaging and dose computations to represent an inherently 3-D problem. Current state-of-the-art treatment planning systems use 3-D models of the patient and compute 3-D dose distributions, but complete exploration of the solution space of possible beam orientations can be hindered by not-so-intuitive navigation controls. The thesis of this dissertation was that the head-mounted display will permit freer exploration of the patient anatomy and range of possible beam orientations, thereby resulting in more efficient treatment planning. To that end, I developed a new, intuitive navigation mode, which used the orientation of a HMD to determine the direction from which its wearer viewed a 3-D model of