Abstract: Internal organ motion poses a major challenge in the radiation treatment of lung and abdominal cancers. If unaccounted for, organ motion during radiation delivery may lead to under-dosing of cancer cells or overdosing of normal tissue, potentially causing treatment failure or normal-tissue toxicity. Hybrid MR-LINAC systems provide a real-time view of the patient anatomy with a high temporal resolution during radiation delivery. The anatomy visualization offers the opportunity to devise motion mitigation strategies in which the radiotherapy plan actively adapts to anatomical variation in real time during irradiation. This research proposes a control-theoretic approach to intra-fraction motion management for step-and-shoot IMRT delivery. The proposed approach uses the real-time MRI information to monitor the delivery of radiation dose and dynamically adjusts the treatment plan in response to dose discrepancies that may occur due to respiration-induced motion.

About the speaker: Ehsan Salari is an Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Wichita State University. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Florida in 2011. His research interests are in the area of Operations Research with applications to healthcare and energy systems. A special focus of his research is the study of emerging technologies in cancer treatment and, in particular, radiation therapy to fully assess and exploit their potential through the application of mathematical modeling and optimization techniques. Prior to his current position, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital.