{"doi":"10.3390/cancers15092636","title":"Computational Optimization of Irradiance and Fluence for Interstitial Photodynamic Therapy Treatment of Patients with Malignant Central Airway Obstruction","abstract":"There are no effective treatments for patients with extrinsic malignant central airway obstruction (MCAO). In a recent clinical study, we demonstrated that interstitial photodynamic therapy (I-PDT) is a safe and potentially effective treatment for patients with extrinsic MCAO. In previous preclinical studies, we reported that a minimum light irradiance and fluence should be maintained within a significant volume of the target tumor to obtain an effective PDT response. In this paper, we present a computational approach to personalized treatment planning of light delivery in I-PDT that simultaneously optimizes the delivered irradiance and fluence using finite element method (FEM) solvers of either Comsol Multiphysics® or Dosie™ for light propagation. The FEM simulations were validated with light dosimetry measurements in a solid phantom with tissue-like optical properties. The agreement between the treatment plans generated by two FEMs was tested using typical imaging data from four patients with extrinsic MCAO treated with I-PDT. The concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) and its 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were used to test the agreement between the simulation results and measurements, and between the two FEMs treatment plans. Dosie with CCC = 0.994 (95% CI, 0.953–0.996) and Comsol with CCC = 0.999 (95% CI, 0.985–0.999) showed excellent agreement with light measurements in the phantom. The CCC analysis showed very good agreement between Comsol and Dosie treatment plans for irradiance (95% CI, CCC: 0.996–0.999) and fluence (95% CI, CCC: 0.916–0.987) in using patients’ data. In previous preclinical work, we demonstrated that effective I-PDT is associated with a computed light dose of ≥45 J/cm2 when the irradiance is ≥8.6 mW/cm2 (i.e., the effective rate-based light dose). In this paper, we show how to use Comsol and Dosie packages to optimize rate-based light dose, and we present Dosie’s newly developed domination sub-maps method to improve the planning of the delivery of the effective rate-based light dose. We conclude that image-based treatment planning using Comsol or Dosie FEM-solvers is a valid approach to guide the light dosimetry in I-PDT of patients with MCAO.","journal":"Cancers","year":2023,"id":372701,"datarank":0.3385829431688969,"base_score":1.791759469228055,"endowment":1.791759469228055,"self_citation_contribution":0.26876392038420827,"citation_network_contribution":0.06981902278468868,"self_endowment_contribution":0.26876392038420827,"citer_contribution":0.06981902278468868,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":5,"citers_with_citation_signal":5,"citers_with_endowment":5,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9535,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1133325,"name":"Evgueni Parilov","orcid":"0009-0001-1924-3323","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1133698,"name":"Karl W. Beeson","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1133699,"name":"M. J. Potasek","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":963758,"name":"Nathaniel M. Ivanick","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":963760,"name":"Lawrence Tworek","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":328926,"name":"Alan D. Hutson","orcid":"0000-0002-7353-5650","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":373614,"name":"Gal Shafirstein","orcid":"0000-0003-4413-9330","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":963281,"name":"Emily Oakley","orcid":"0000-0002-1181-0290","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":34,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:15:58.101083Z","pmid":"37174102","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}