Standard Catheter Insertion Pattern Adaptation
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Solution Overview
Problem
The current medical treatment planning for brachytherapy is labor-intensive, requiring significant manual work for generating and adapting catheter or needle insertion patterns, which can be time-consuming and complex, especially for less experienced clinicians.
Innovation Solution
A treatment planning system that provides and allows clinicians to select from a set of standard catheter or needle insertion patterns, which are predetermined to ensure symmetry and adherence to dose constraints, and can be optimized based on patient-specific geometry, using a cost function to adapt patterns while maintaining clinical preferences and avoiding critical structures.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If standard patterns are manually generated and adapted to patient geometry, then treatment plan accuracy is improved, but time consumption and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
Standard insertion patterns are pre-calculated and stored in a database before patient treatment. These patterns represent optimal catheter/needle arrangements that have been predetermined to satisfy dose constraints and geometric requirements, eliminating the need to perform complex pattern generation during actual treatment planning
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of manually adjusting each pattern parameter, the system automatically adapts pre-defined standard patterns by changing key parameters such as scaling factors, rotation angles, and position offsets to match patient-specific anatomy while maintaining the underlying optimal pattern structure
2Manufacturing precision
If complex manual adaptation is performed for each patient, then pattern precision is improved, but ease of operation deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs automatic pattern selection and adaptation without requiring manual intervention. The computer automatically retrieves appropriate standard patterns, adapts them to patient geometry using algorithms, and generates the final insertion pattern, making the process self-service and eliminating complex manual operations
Solution Approach 2:
Proven standard patterns from the database are copied and reused as templates for different patients. These standard patterns represent best practices and optimal configurations that can be replicated across multiple cases with automatic adaptation, rather than creating new patterns from scratch for each patient
3Productivity
If automatic pattern generation is implemented, then productivity is improved, but manufacturing precision may deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The system copies proven standard patterns that have been previously validated to meet clinical requirements and dose constraints. By reusing these pre-validated templates rather than generating completely new patterns automatically, the system maintains high pattern quality while achieving fast automatic processing
Solution Approach 2:
The automatic system maintains precision by carefully controlling parameter changes during pattern adaptation. Only essential geometric parameters are modified to match patient anatomy, while critical parameters that ensure dosimetric quality and pattern effectiveness are preserved from the standard patterns
Data Source
AI summary
The generation of a pattern and for an adaptation to the specific geometry requires a lot of manual work. The workflow for the clinician is simplified during treatment planning. A treatment planning system is configured for determining a set of catheter or needle insertion positions to be used during treatment. The treatment planning system includes an image providing module for providing a medical image from which at least one treatment target structure can be derived. Further the treatment planning system includes a pattern providing module for providing one or a set of standard patterns for catheter or needle insertion including a plurality of catheter or needle insertion positions. The catheter or needle positions relate to treatment positions in the at least one treatment target structure.