Planning proton therapy of the eye.

We describe a program for planning treatments of the eye with charged particle beams. Many of its features apply to treatment planning programs in general. These include the three-dimensional definition of the tumor volume and of normal structures, the possibility of delivering the treatment beam from any direction in space, the provision of arbitrary viewpoints including a "beam's eye" point of view, the design and fabrication of the field shaping aperture, the specification of the necessary beam quality (range and modulation), the calculation and display of isodose contours on any plane in space and on relevant surfaces, the identification of the extent to which normal structures are included or excluded from the beam, and the stimulation of the desired alignment film with which patient alignment can be verified.