Mixed Reality Application for Treatment Planning in Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy offers a noninvasive and painless treatment option for cancer patients, utilizing high-energy x-rays or particles (e.g. protons) to deposit dose in the tumor cells while minimizing damage to healthy tissues. Treatment planning, both in the case of photon and proton therapy, is performed through dedicated software. However, the lack of 3D visualization of the dose distribution makes plan evaluation difficult. Mixed Reality technology addresses these limitations, enhancing treatment planning and assessment with comprehensive 3D inspection compared to standard 2D visualization methods on screen. This work aims at providing a user-friendly and intuitive Mixed Reality application for clinicians to visualize 3D dose distribution and CT data, allowing interactive comparison between photon and proton plans to determine the most suitable solution for each specific clinical case. The application’s effectiveness was tested in a user study involving 9 experts, reporting promising results in terms of interactive visualization and efficient communication, laying the basis for further developments.