When planning a therapy, different competing quality criteria like prospects of treatment success, risk of side effects and costs have to be considered. Thereby, chances and risks must be individually balanced for every patient.
For that purpose the therapy planning is modeled as a multi-criteria optimization problem. Different, best possible compromises - so-called Pareto-optimal solutions - are then calculated. Using a real-time decision support tool the most appropriate treatment for a patient can be interactively selected from them.

• Radiation Therapy

  

  Radiotherapy and especially intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) is a treatment form customized to the individual patient. Therapy planning aims for a good compromise between tumor control with sufficiently high doses and avoidance of complications by sparing the healthy tissue. Intensity modulation provides a large variety of clinically meaningful plans, which form good compromises between the therapy aims. In the planning process, the clinician searches for the compromise that best suits the patient.

  • Multi-criteria Therapy Planning
  • Multi-criteria IMRT Optimization
  • BMBF DOT-MOBI - IMRT-Planning

• Ultrasound Therapy

  

  Ultrasound therapy has been a well-established method of treatment for gall and urinary stones and also orthopedic diseases for many years. More recently, it is also applied in combination with advanced medical imaging for non-invasive tumor therapy.
  The activities of this project field aim for full exploitation of its therapeutic potential in clinical practise by means of applied mathematics, in particular numerical optimization.

  • Extra-corporal focussed Ultrasound Therapy

• Radiofrequency Ablation

  

  Surgical removal of liver tumours delivers the best chances of survival; however, most patients do not qualify for the operation because of their state of health or the unreachable location of the tumour. Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) has emerged in recent years as a minimally invasive alternative. A needle-shaped applicator is placed from the exterior through the skin inside the tumour with the aid of medical imaging systems like ultrasound or X-ray computed tomography (CT). High-frequency alternating current is passed into the tissue via the applicator. As a consequence, the tissue heats up and is destroyed. The goal of this project is to develop methods to allow physicians to systematically plan the therapy according to conflicting criteria for each patient individually.

  • Optimization of applicator positioning

• LaparOPT

  

  Surgical treatments include quiet often the opening of the abdominal wall (Laparotomy). In Germany, around 100.000 clinical cases per year require this treatment. One particular complication, who develops at a rate of 10%-20%, is the development of Hernia. 

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