Abstract

In this work, we present matRad, an open-source software for three-dimensional radiation treatment planning of intensity-modulated photon, proton, and carbon ion therapy. The toolkit is entirely written in MATLAB with a highly modular design, consisting of a set of individual functions that model the entire treatment planning workflow. All algorithms—e.g., for ray tracing, dose deposition calculations, fluence optimization, and multileaf collimator sequencing—follow well-established approaches and operate on clinically adequate voxel (3 × 3 × 3 mm) and bixel (5 × 5 mm) resolutions.

CT datasets, as well as base data (pencil beams) required for all computations, are included in matRad. Computation times of 60–100 s (60–400 s) are achieved for realistic patient cases, including photon (charged particle) dose calculations and fluence optimization. Memory consumption ranges between 0.2 GB and 2.2 GB. Dose distributions from a treatment planning study for a phantom and a prostate patient case, considering multiple radiation modalities, are presented, along with a prostate IMRT case. Both the computational performance and dosimetric results encourage the future use of matRad in educational and scientific settings.

The entire code is available for download at http://e0404.github.io/matRad/. matRad is developed for educational and research purposes and is not intended for clinical use.

Keywords:

• Radiation therapy
• Particle therapy
• Treatment planning
• Open source software.

Note: Thesis submitted for the M.Sc. in Medical Physics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and the M.Sc. in Clinical Medical Physics at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.