OpenTPS -- Open-source treatment planning system for research in proton therapy

Introduction. Treatment planning systems (TPS) are an essential component for simulating and optimizing a radiation therapy treatment before administering it to the patient. It ensures that the tumor is well covered and the dose to the healthy tissues is minimized. However, the TPS provided by commercial companies often come with a large panel of tools, each implemented in the form of a black-box making it difficult for researchers to use them for implementing and testing new ideas. To address this issue, we have developed an open-source TPS. Approach. We have developed an open-source software platform, OpenTPS (opentps.org), to generate treatment plans for external beam radiation therapy, and in particular for proton therapy. It is designed to be a flexible and user-friendly platform (coded with the freely usable Python language) that can be used by medical physicists, radiation oncologists, and other members of the radiation therapy community to create customized treatment plans for educational and research purposes. Result. OpenTPS includes a range of tools and features that can be used to analyze patient anatomy, simulate the delivery of the radiation beam, and optimize the treatment plan to achieve the desired dose distribution. It can be used to create treatment plans for a variety of cancer types and was designed to be extended to other treatment modalities. Significance. A new open-source treatment planning system has been built for research in proton therapy. Its flexibility allows an easy integration of new techniques and customization of treatment plans. It is freely available for use and is regularly updated and supported by a community of users and developers who contribute to the ongoing development and improvement of the software.