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Towards On-Line Plan Adaptation Of Unified Intensity-Modulated Arc Therapy Using A Fast-Direct Aperture Optimization Algorithm, Michael Macfarlane

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

External beam radiotherapy (EBRT) plays a vital role in the treatment of cancer, with close to half of all cancer patients receiving EBRT at some point over their course of treatment. Although EBRT is a well-established form of treatment, there are a number of ways in which EBRT could still be improved in terms of quality and efficiency for treatment planning and radiation dose delivery. This thesis reports a series of improvements made to EBRT.

First, we developed and evaluated a new treatment planning technique called unified intensity-modulated arc therapy (UIMAT) which combines the optimization and delivery of rotational volumetric …