2013/12/04 by Thomas Bortfeld, Bortfeld, Thomas, Jagdish Ramakrishnan +5
Mathematics · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Radiotherapy Techniques #Effects of Radiation Exposure #FOS: Mathematics #FOS: Physical sciences #Mathematical Biology Tumor Growth #Medical Physics (physics.med-ph) #Optimization and Control (math.OC) #Radiation Therapy and Dosimetry #math.OC #physics.med-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1312.1332
41 pages, 7 figures
openalex publication_date 2013/12/04 · arxiv created 2015/04/24 · arxiv updated 2015/04/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We analyze the effect of tumor repopulation on optimal dose delivery in radiation therapy. We are primarily motivated by accelerated tumor repopulation towards the end of radiation treatment, which is believed to play a role in treatment failure for some tumor sites. A dynamic programming framework is developed to determine an optimal fractionation scheme based on a model of cell kill due to radiation and tumor growth in between treatment days. We find that faster tumor growth suggests shorter overall treatment duration. In addition, the presence of accelerated repopulation suggests larger dose fractions later in the treatment to compensate for the increased tumor proliferation. We prove that the optimal dose fractions are increasing over time. Numerical simulations indicate potential for improvement in treatment effectiveness.