A tutorial on optimization methods for cancer radiation treatment planning

Every year, thousands of cancer patients receive radiation treatment. Radiation beams are delivered to the patient from different directions, with high precision, with the objective of maximizing dosage to the tumor, while minimizing damage to the surrounding healthy tissue. This paper is an introduction to the basic optimization problem underlying radiation treatment planning. Specifically, we show how the computation of optimal beam directions and intensities can be formulated as a convex optimization problem. We discuss some common metrics and constraints used in radiation treatment planning, using methods from optimization, medical physics, and finance and risk management. We also review some effective parallelizable methods that have been developed for solving this inherently large-scale, multi-objective optimization problem.