Method and Apparatus for Using Patient-Experience Outcomes When Developing Radiation-Therapy Treatment Plans

摘要

A control circuit has access to information that correlates a plurality of patient-experience outcomes with corresponding delivered-radiation metrics and uses that plurality of patient-experience outcomes in conjunction with developing a radiation-therapy treatment plan for a particular patient. Those patient-experience outcomes can comprise, for example, information regarding how various patients fared post-radiation treatment as regards such things as post-radiation treatment life expectancy, tumor eradication success, and one or more other quality-of-life metrics. These teachings will accommodate using a particular one of the patient-experience outcomes as an optimization goal when optimizing candidate radiation-therapy treatment plans to develop the radiation-therapy treatment plan. In such a case these teachings will further accommodate, if desired, permitting a user to modify one or more optimization objectives while displaying intermediate optimization results.

主权项

1. An apparatus comprising:
a memory having information stored therein correlating a plurality of patient-experience outcomes with corresponding delivered-radiation metrics; and a control circuit operably coupled to the memory and configured to:
use the plurality of patient-experience outcomes in conjunction with developing a radiation-therapy treatment plan for a particular patient.