TRiP98 Introduction
TRiP98 is the acronym for
TReatment planning for Particles, 1998 edition.
It is a planning software dedicated to radiotherapy of cancer with energetic ions,
in particular carbon. It offers means to calculate and optimize three-dimensional
dose distributions, both physical and biological.
NOTE, however, that this software is a research
prototype, and must not be used for regular patient treatments !
Optimization is performed by means of inverse planning with respect to GSI's magnetic raster scan system.
That is, a given target volume is divided into slices of equal irradiation energy.
For each position in every slice the number of particles is determined which is
required to obtain
the prescribed dose distribution across the target volume.
These distributions are normally homogeneous, but could be inhomogenous
as well.
A model to calculate the beam model, i.e. depth dose profiles and nuclear fragment
spectra is included.
Data import and export are based on files of various formats:
- simple text files where readability is an issue,
- binary data files where space is valuable and fast I/O is required,
- files of formats compatible with the Voxelplan system, where exchange
with clinically used software is required (dose cubes, CT cubes, contour data).
Because
TRiP98 is meant to cooperate with clinically used software
like the Voxelplan system, it lacks own graphics output and graphical user interfaces,
although this might change in the future.
Instead, it is a command-line oriented program, which, however, can also be
run by means of an own scripting language to allow batch execution.
Thus it can be interfaced to freeware interface builders like Tcl/Tk.
TRiP98 and its predecessor are not only in clinical use for
the GSI radiotherapy project but also for the planning of biological and physical
irradiation experiments which accompany the medical program.
Last updated:
$Id: trip98intro.html,v 1.5 2011/03/08 19:02:52 kraemer Exp $
M.Kraemer@gsi.de