Routine 3 D Treatment Planning : Opportunities , Challenges , and Hazards Review

In an ideal world, radiation treatment beams would fully encompass the target tissue and exclude all nontarget normal tissues. In practice, however, this is impossible due to the intimate relationship between tumors and surrounding normal structures. Radiation treatment planning, therefore, is based on a compromise between tumor and normal tissue considerations. The radiation oncologist’s traditional approach to this problem is to: