Treatment Planning

The proton treatment plan for 5-year-old Ashya King, who made headlines in 2014 after his parents were arrested for taking him from a National Health Service (NHS) hospital in the U.K. and bringing him to a proton therapy center in the Czech Republic for treatment. Proton therapy was not available in the U.K. The boys cancer went into complete remission after the proton treatments. This treatment plan, overlaid on the CT scan, shows the proton delivery zones without penetration into health tissue in the child's thorax or abdomen. 

This proton treatment plan created with the Varian Eclipse software illustrates how protons interact with a patient's tissues in a prostate cancer case. The red shows the delivery of the protons to the target where the maximum amount of energy is deposited in the patient. To deliver protons on target, CT scans are used to determine the proton stopping power of the tissues the beam passes through to determine the proton velocity needed.