A Mathematical Programming Model for Radiotherapy Scheduling with Time Windows

Abstract

In external-beam radiotherapy (RT), high-energy radiation beams are delivered by a linear accelerator in a series of irradiation sessions undertaken over multiple days. In this work, we consider the problem of scheduling and sequencing RT sessions considering time window preferences given by patients for the starting time of their appointments. Most studies in the literature focus on assigning patients to linacs and days, neglecting the sequencing component, and existing sequencing algorithms are only able to solve the problem using approximation methods due to the intractability of the formulated models. We propose a mixed-integer linear programming model and test it using data from a large Dutch RT center. Results show B. Vieira (B)