Treatment Planning of Gamma Knife and Stereotactic Radiosurgery in Brain Tumor

The principle behind the radiosurgery treatment is to irradiate the diseased target with radiation. The intensity of the dose received should be fairly low for each beam to protect the surrounding normal tissues. It is basically used for the treatment of brain tumors and other lesions. A classical radiosurgical system makes use of a rigid skeletal fixation of the region to be irradiated. This procedure is quite painful to the patient and reduces the effect of treatment. A cost effective, less painful and less invasive technique is devised using a robotic arm. Its six degree-of-freedom provides an arbitrary spatial motion of the radiation source, providing higher accuracies. The major steps involved include planning the treatment and the corresponding beam motion, with the help of the geometrical locations of the tumor got from multi-modality scans like MRI, CT, US and so on. From the results, the automatic planning can improve the energy deposition, shorten the overall treatment time and thus allow the equipment to be available for more patients. Unlike traditional surgery, gamma knife surgery does not carry the risk of infection, anesthesia complications, hematoma formation, CSF leak, facial weakness, hearing loss, and brain stem injury. There are rarely serious side effects. In over 30 years, more than 100,000 people have received gamma knife treatment.