AI Designs Radiation Therapy Treatment Plan For Cancer In Twenty Minutes

Researchers have used AI to develop personalized radiation therapy cancer treatment plans, taking only 20 minutes.Brian Tran/University of Toronto Engineering A new artificial intelligence (AI) tool developed by a team at the University of Toronto may be able to significantly reduce the time needed to develop radiation therapy treatment plans for people with cancer. The research published in the journal Medical Physics used AI to mine historical radiation therapy data and designed algorithms to develop recommended treatment strategies. To check the AI-produced relevant treatment plans, the researchers looked at 217 patients with head and neck cancer who had their radiation therapy schedules developed via conventional methods. "There have been other AI optimization engines that have been developed, but the idea behind ours is that it more closely mimics the current clinical best practice," says Aaron Babier, the lead author of the research from the University of Toronto Engineering Department. At the moment, developing radiation therapy plans for each individual patient's tumor can take days, valuable time for patients as the cancer often continues to grow and evolve, but also for physicians spending time designing these complex treatment strategies.