Multi-objective genetic algorithms for scheduling of radiotherapy treatments for categorised cancer patients

This paper presents a multi-objective optimisation model and algorithms for scheduling of radiotherapy treatments for categorised cancer patients. The model is developed considering real life radiotherapy treatment processes at Arden Cancer Centre, in the UK. The scheduling model considers various real life constraints, such as doctors’ rota, machine availability, patient’s category, waiting time targets, (i.e., the time when a patient should receive the first treatment fraction), and so on. Two objectives are defined: minimisation of the Average patient’s waiting time and minimisation of Average length of breaches of waiting time targets. Three Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are developed and implemented which treat radiotherapy patient categories, namely emergency, palliative and radical patients in different ways: (1) Standard-GA, which considers all patient categories equally, (2) KB-GA, which has an embedded knowledge on the scheduling of emergency patient category and (3) Weighte...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: ESWA
• Authors: Dobrila Petrovic, Mohammad Morshed, Sanja Petrovic
• Keywords: Database, ESWA 2011, Patient, Patient Categories, Radiotherapy Treatment