Patent Application
20100151416
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to methods and systems for positioning patients for surgical and other medical procedures.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventional radiation treatment typically involves directing a radiation beam at a tumor in a patient to deliver a predetermined dose of therapeutic radiation to the tumor according to an established treatment plan. A suitable radiation treatment device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,668,847, issued Sep. 16, 1997 to Hernandez, the contents of which are incorporated herein for all purposes.
Healthy tissue and organs are often in the treatment path of the radiation beam during radiation treatment. The healthy tissue and organs must be taken into account when delivering a dose of radiation to the tumor, thereby complicating determination of the treatment plan. Specifically, the plan must strike a balance between the need to minimize damage to healthy tissue and organs and the need to ensure that the tumor receives an adequately high dose of radiation. In this regard, cure rates for many tumors are a sensitive function of the radiation dose they receive.
Treatment plans are therefore designed to maximize radiation delivered to a target while minimizing radiation delivered to healthy tissue. However, a treatment plan is designed assuming that relevant portions of a patient will be in a particular position during treatment. If the relevant portions are not positioned exactly as required by the treatment plan, the goals of maximizing target radiation and minimizing healthy tissue radiation may not be achieved. More specifically, errors in positioning the patient can cause the delivery of low radiation doses to tumors and high radiation doses to sensitive healthy tissue. The potential for misdelivery increases with increased positioning errors.
Due to the foregoing, treatment plans are designed under the assumption that positioning errors may occur that may result in misdelivery of radiation. Treatment plans compensate for this potential misdelivery by specifying lower doses or smaller beam shapes (e.g., beams that do not radiate edge of a tumor) than would be specified if misdelivery was not expected. Such compensation may decrease as margins of error in patient positioning decrease.
Current radiation treatment devices provide sophisticated control over radiation delivery to a patient site. Specifically, these devices allow a therapist to target a tumor with Intensity-Modulated RadioTherapy (IMRT) treatments, Conformal Radiation Treatments (CRT) and composite radiation beam distributions. However, as described above, the full effectiveness of such features cannot be achieved without a system providing accurate patient positioning.
When used in conjunction with conventionally-designed treatments, more accurate positioning reduces the chance of harming healthy tissue. More accurate patient positioning also allows the use of more aggressive treatments. Specifically, if a margin of error in patient positioning is known to be small, treatment may be designed to safely radiate a greater portion of a tumor with higher doses than in scenarios where the margin of error is larger.
Modern radiation treatments provide the delivery of multiple radiation beams during the course of treatment. A treatment is divided into multiple fractions, with each fraction being delivered to a patient according to a periodic schedule such as weekly or the like. Each fraction consists of multiple segments, with each segment specifying a particular beam type, beam shape, dose, treatment device position, and delivery time. Of course, two segments of a fraction need not differ in each of the above factors.
During a treatment fraction, adjustments must be made after each segment to the treatment device and/or to the patient position. These adjustments are often time-consuming, because most radiation therapy devices are located within vaults constructed with thick concrete walls and thick doors that can take 30 seconds to open and close. Therefore, it can take a significant amount of time after a segment is completed for an operator to enter the room, make the necessary adjustments, leave the room, and operate the radiation treatment device to deliver the next segment.
Intensity modulation radiation therapy (IMRT) enables the treatment of lesions that either partially or fully surround critical normal tissues. It requires a high degree of precision, both in set-up and positioning of the patient to achieve the full benefit of IMRT. However, even though the patient can be set up accurately initially, the probability of patient movement during the entire treatment of fraction (intra-fraction movement) is much higher in IMRT compared to conventional therapy because the total treatment time of IMRT is enormously longer.
Patient movement can be reduced with the aid of immobilization or positioning devices. Currently, the thermoplastic mask is the most common method for immobilization during brain, head and neck treatments. The mask system has been shown to restrict patient movement efficiently and accurately for conventional treatments. However, there are a few issues to consider in the use of mask system only for high precision therapy like IMRT treatments. First, mask is somewhat uncomfortable for many patients. Comfort is a very important factor in IMRT because of the much longer treatment times involved. Although an uncomfortable immobilization device may work properly in relatively short treatments, it may cause problems in cases where patients strain to move even more after a certain period of time due to lack of comfort when treatment times are very long. Some patients who experience claustrophobia cannot tolerate the mask. Another problem is that many head and neck patients lose weight significantly during the treatment period, resulting in loose masks. The adverse effects of using loose-fitting masks is severe in IMRT. It is often necessary to construct a new mask periodically as the original mask becomes too loose fitting, which may require re-scan, re-plan, and QA for IMRT, thereby increasing costs. The Vac Fix® mold-strap combination system is also used for the immobilization or positioning of a patient. In this system, the patient's head comfortably fits to a customized Vac Fix® mold and is fastened by straps. This system cooperates with a patient movement monitoring system. [Bova et al, The University of Florida frameless high-precision stereotactic radiotherapy system. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 1997; 38(4):875-882; Buatti et al, Preliminary experience with frameless stereotactic radiotherapy, Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 1998; 42(3):591-592; Meeks et al. Image localization for frameless stereotactic radiotherapy, Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2000; 46(5):1291-1299, and Tome et al. A high-precision system for conformal intracranial radiotherapy, Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2000; 47(45): 1137-1143.]
However, all immobilization systems currently available are passive from the patient's point of view. Patients are asked to remain immobile once the initial setups are done. But by nature, patients are always restless and prone to move, resulting in a certain amount of displacement of the target throughout the procedure. It is then necessary to re-setup the patient if the displacement is out of the tolerance incorporated in the plan of treatment. Unfortunately, however, it is very difficult to detect the amount of patient displacement that occurred during the fraction treatment in the mask system. Real time monitoring systems such as cameras, for example, provide sufficient information to perform patient re-setup with relative ease. However, such procedures are very time consuming and labor intensive since the beam needs to be discontinued and the therapists must re-enter the treatment room and re-setup the patient whenever the displacement is out of tolerance. Moreover, the necessity for these repeated procedures increases the time the patient is required to remain immobile, thereby increasing the likelihood of further displacements of position due to restlessness.
It is an object of the invention to provide a system and method of patient positioning that is not subject to the above-noted disadvantages.
One embodiment of the invention relates to a device for positioning a patient in a fixed location comprising:
A second embodiment of the invention concerns a system for positioning a patient in a fixed location comprising the above device in combination with means for receiving the information concerning the position of the portion of the patient.
A still further embodiment of the invention relates to a method for locating a portion of a patient in a predetermined fixed position comprising:
One embodiment of the present invention relates to an interactive positioning system and device, a new concept in patient immobilization in radiation therapies particularly adapted for brain, neck and head treatments. The term, “interactive positioning process”, as used herein, defines a process that provides information of patient movement during treatment to patients in real time and allows them to feedback their own motion to maintain the desired setup position as closely as possible. One embodiment of the system comprises the above described device having means thereon to transmit a tracing laser and a target laser.
The device of the invention is illustrated in
One operation of the method of the invention is depicted in
In a second embodiment of the method of the invention, depicted in
A third embodiment of the method of the invention is depicted in
The tattoo-free wings 14 enables a valuable function. In a typical CT procedure, a reference point of the patient is determined by three lasers (one sagital and two lateral lasers). Three small radio opaque metal balls are attached on the patient's skin to provide radiographic information of the reference point on the CT image set. Then, three tattoos are made where the radio opaque metal balls are attached to reproduce the setup used for CT scan. The treatment target, however, is generally located somewhere on the patient other than the reference point of CT scan. Thus, it is necessary to shift the patient position with respect to the treatment room coordinates to match the patient's isocenter with that of machine. This is accomplished by setting up the patient based on tattoos made during CT and moving the treatment table the amount required. Then, lasers are lined up with the treatment isocenter and new tattoos are made to reproduce the treatment setup for later treatments. Therefore, most patients have two sets of three tattoos on their skin. This can create problems of confusion from time to time, especially when radiation therapists are changed in the middle of the treatment period that is usually longer than 4 weeks. Precautions must be taken to avoid the treatment of wrong sites.
This is more important for brain, head and neck treatments wherein there are many critical organs close to the tumor. Utilizing the device of the invention, radio opaque metal balls (not shown) are placed on tattoo-free-wings, and the central area of the reflector-frame instead of on the patient's skin. Therefore, patients are not required to have tattoos during CT scans, thereby resolving the problem of confusion between treatment tattoos and CT tattoos.
Intensity modulation radiation therapy (IMRT) is one of the cutting-edge technologies in radiation therapy. The main goal of IMRT is to maximize the avoidance of radiation doses to critical organs and normal tissue surrounding the target while delivering a therapeutic dose to the target volume. To achieve this goal, it inherently requires a very stiff dose gradient between target and critical organs closely located to the target. Both treatment planning and beam delivery require high degrees of precision. Thus, the level of success of IMRT highly depends on how small the overall uncertainties are, how accurately known they are, and how adequately they are incorporated in the planning. These are even more important in the brain head, and neck treatments because there are many critical organs near the target.
The invention is highly valuable in that:
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60389719 | Jun 2002 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 10464866 | Jun 2003 | US |
| Child | 12715021 | US |
