Cyberknife Radiation Modeling: Effects of Relaxed Translational and Rotational Constraints on Healthy Tissue Irradiation

The Cyberknife system is a robotic radio surgery instrument that is used to treat cancers in different parts of the human body. Because of its accuracy and precision, it has become one of the best radio surgery systems in the world. However, even with Cyberknife the treatment time for one session talces from 30 minutes up to 120 minutes depending on the size, shape, and position of the tumor in the human body. In this research, a solution is presented to aid in reducing this long treatment time. An algorithm is developed which simulates the amount of the healthy tissue that is damaged when certain constraints of the robotic arm of the cyberknife are relaxed. By using this algorithm, the physician gets a better understanding of which constraints can be relaxed so that there will be less tissue damage along with reduced treatment time and ultimately understand the trade-offs being made. The algorithm successfully calculates the amount of the healthy tissue that is irradiated due to the certain constraint relaxation plans that have been proposed.