Artificial Intelligence in Radiation Therapy

Artificial intelligence (AI) has great potential to transform the clinical workflow of radiotherapy. Since the introduction of deep neural networks, many AI-based methods have been proposed to address challenges in different aspects of radiotherapy. Commercial vendors have started to release AI-based tools that can be readily integrated to the established clinical workflow. To show the recent progress in AI-aided radiotherapy, we have reviewed AI-based studies in five major aspects of radiotherapy including image reconstruction, image registration, image segmentation, image synthesis, and automatic treatment planning. In each section, we summarized and categorized the recently published methods, followed by a discussion of the challenges, concerns, and future development. Given the rapid development of AI-aided radiotherapy, the efficiency and effectiveness of radiotherapy in the future could be substantially improved through intelligent automation of various aspects of radiotherapy

A compact radio frequency quadrupole for ion bunching in the WITCH experiment

During the last several years the WITCH (Weak Interaction Trap for CHarged particles) experimental setup at ISOLDE has undergone various upgrades aiming at improvement of general performance. An essential innovation, a compact Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) ion cooler and buncher device, was designed and successfully commissioned as a part of the off-line tuning system of WITCH. The RFQ is coupled to the existing surface ionization ion source providing high intensity ion bunches (up to 10(7) ions per bunch) towards the pulsed drift tube and the Penning traps of WITCH. This achievement allows for loading and tuning of the Penning traps in the domain of space charge limits and grants off-line operation independently of the REX-ISOLDE ion source. The current upgrade allows for a more thorough and frequent testing with bunched stable ion beams of high intensities, which will be used for studying various systematic effects involved in experiments with radioactive ions. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved