SIPRAD: A Radiotherapy Planning System (RTPS)

Abstract

Cancer is one type of lethal disease that needs an immediate diagnosis and treatment, demanding the use of advanced technologies. External Radiotherapy is the most common treatment used in the world. Radiotherapy Planning Systems (RTPS) is a software suite used for delineation of organs and calculation of irradiation doses and is essential to ensure the accuracy of oncologic treatment in clinics and hospitals. This works presents a type of RTPS, named SIPRAD, developed for public hospitals reality in Brazil with the assistance of the doctors. SIPRAD architecture uses a number of management and operational tools for all radiotherapy treatment process. One of the main contributions of this work is its interoperable infrastructure capable of communicating with all health systems and devices. Another contribution is a drawing tool, which is able to perform an automatic contour delineation in organs at risk and tumors volumes. Additionally also extends the use of tomography slices in grayscale images applied in three plans: axial, coronal and sagittal. SIPRAD automatic contour delineation saves up 75% of the time for drawings in three different types of regions body exams. Finally, SIPRAD was tested in a set of oncologic exams provided by the University of Sao Paulo Clinical Hospital (HCRP and HC-USP) in Brazil obtained from patients with different conditions of ethnology, ages, tumor severities and body regions.