Program Information
BolusVision: Software for 3D Printer-Enabled Soft Bolus Design and Fabrication
J Tan*, T Chiu , B Zhao , T Long , W Lu , T Strom , K Westover , S Jiang , X Gu , UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX
Presentations
MO-DE-FS1-3 (Monday, July 31, 2017) 1:45 PM - 3:45 PM Room: Four Seasons 1
Purpose: Patient-tailored compensators (boluses) provide excellent dosimetry for both electron and photon beam radiotherapy but are challenging to manufacture. We report development of a software package, namely BolusVision, to facilitate the design and manufacture of soft compensators that are cast in silicone using 3D printed molds.
Methods: BolusVision is designed to automate aspects of design using information from the treatment planning system and clinicians. The current version BolusVision 1.0, has five major functions: 1) Load DICOM objects, including images, structure set, plan information, and dose, from a treatment planning system; 2) Generate bolus contours interactively with real-time visualization of modified 3D dose matrices; 3) Surface smoothing; 4) Generation and visualization of positive and negative bolus mold objects; 5) Conversion of mold models into 3D printer-compatible formats such as STereoLithography (STL). The software is implemented in MATLAB, utilizing built-in libraries.
Results: Since October 2016 patient-specific boluses have been designed, manufactured and used clinically for 10 disease sites, including breast, head and neck. BolusVision has significantly simplified bolus generation compared to manual procedures. Moreover, algorithms that optimize where to divide bolus models for the purpose for 3D mold printing resulted in reductions in printing times by 30% to 50%, depending on bolus volume and surface area. For large boluses such as breast we calculated savings in manufacturing time of 9 hours in some cases.
Conclusion: Computer-aided design of soft custom compensators enabled by 3D printing yielded significant time and resource savings that have enabled broad clinical use of soft custom boluses.
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