BioSuite and DICOM

A few years ago Dr. Julian Uzan together with Professor Alan Nahum developed a comprehensive research tool for radiobiological evaluation and optimization, called BioSuite. The tool has continuously evolved and has been made available at no extra cost for the participants of the Clatterbridge Radiobiological Modeling course that is being held (more or less) annually.

BioSuite uses input from treatment planning systems in the form of differential dose-volume histograms (DVHs). More specifically, the tool supports DVHs exported from Philips Pinnacle³ and Varian Eclipse. One format BioSuite does not support though, is DICOM!

To overcome this limitation, I have developed a simple preprocessing tool called the BioSuite Exporter. This tool allows the user to import DICOM RT Plans, RT Structure Sets and RT Doses,

and based on this data the tool computes the resulting dose volume-histograms associated with each RT Plan for the regions of interest in the RT Structure Set. The user can view the dose-volume histograms and select a subset of the DVHs for export.

Upon export, BioSuite Exporter writes absolute volume, differential dose-volume histograms for each of the selected regions-of-interest in a comma-separated value (CSV) format that can be imported by BioSuite.

For BioSuite users and others interested in obtaining a free copy of this tool, please contact me at biosuite@cureos.com.