[CCoE Notice] Industrial Engineering Seminar Announcement

[Tekin, Eylem]

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING SEMINAR

Date: April 12, 2013
Time: 10am-11am
Place: D 102

Uncertainty Management in Radiation Therapy
By
Dr. Omid Nohadani
School of Industrial Engineering
Purdue University

Abstract

In radiation therapy, high energy ionizing radiation is used to treat cancerous tumors. Treatment variables can be optimized to attain desired dose distributions of geometrically complex shapes while satisfying clinical constraints on tumors and other organs at risk. However, uncertainties can degrade the quality of treatments, so much so that an otherwise optimal plan may turn out clinically unacceptable. We investigate different sources of uncertainty, such as imperfect setup during the treatment, imaging and dosimetric errors, organ motion and regression, and discuss the corresponding robust convex or non convex methods. Based on clinical cases, we show that the proposed plans are intrinsically immune to the respective uncertainties and meet all clinical criteria. Furthermore, an extension to multi-modal treatments is motivated in conjunction with the concurrent application of chemotherapeutic agents. We show that spatiotemporal biological changes can be incorporated for individualized treatment.

Biography

Omid Nohadani is an Assistant Professor in the School of Industrial Engineering and the graduate advisor for Computational Science and Engineering at Purdue University. His research focuses on robust optimization problems arising in a variety of settings: statistics, nano-technology, ultrafast optics, cancer radiation therapy, high-performance computing and vehicle routing. The unifying theme of his work is the development of generic optimization methods that are suited for simulation-based problems which do not require knowledge of problem structure. He received a Diploma degree in mathematical physics from the University of Bonn, Germany and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Southern California. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Operations Research Center at MIT and a research fellow and instructor at Harvard Medical School.

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