We propose a first-order smoothed penalty algorithm (SPA) to solve the sparse recovery problem min{||x||_1 : Ax=b}. SPA is efficient as long as the matrix-vector product Ax and A^Ty can be computed efficiently; in particular, A need not be an orthogonal projection matrix. SPA converges to the target signal by solving a sequence of penalized … Read more
Accurate signal recovery or image reconstruction from indirect and possibly under- sampled data is a topic of considerable interest; for example, the literature in the recent field of compressed sensing is already quite immense. Inspired by recent breakthroughs in the development of novel fi rst-order methods in convex optimization, most notably Nesterov’s smoothing technique, this paper … Read more
This paper deals with numerical behaviour and convergence properties of a recently presented column generation approach for optimization of so called step-and-shoot radiotherapy treatment plans. The approach and variants of it have been reported to be efficient in practice, finding near-optimal solutions by generating only a low number of columns. The impact of different restrictions … Read more
Radiation therapy is an important modality in treating various cancers. Various treatment planning and delivery technologies have emerged to support Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), creating significant opportunities to advance this type of treatment. We investigate the possibility of including the dose prescription, specified by the DVH, within the convex optimization framework for inverse IMRT … Read more
A method for generating a sequence of intensity-modulated radiation therapy step-and-shoot plans with increasing number of segments is presented. The objectives are to generate high-quality plans with few, large and regular segments, and to make the planning process more intuitive. The proposed method combines segment generation with direct step-and-shoot optimization, where leaf positions and segment … Read more
Metabolic networks are defined as the collection of biochemical reactions within a cell that define the functions of that cell. Due to the growing need to understand the functions of biological organisms for industrial and medical purposes, modeling and simulation of metabolic networks has attracted a lot of attention recently. Traditionally, metabolic networks are modeled … Read more
We propose and study a block-iterative projections method for solving linear equations and/or inequalities. The method allows diagonal component-wise relaxation in conjunction with orthogonal projections onto the individual hyperplanes of the system, and is thus called diagonally-relaxed orthogonal projections (DROP). Diagonal relaxation has proven useful in accelerating the initial convergence of simultaneous and block-iterative projection … Read more
We argue that some inverse problems arising in imaging can be efficiently treated using only single-precision (or other reduced-precision) arithmetic, using a combination of old ideas (first-order methods, polynomial preconditioners), and new ones (bilateral filtering, total variation). Using single precision, and having structures which parallelize in the ways needed to take advantage of low-cost/high-performance multi-core/SIMD … Read more
Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are estimated to be one of the leading causes of death. Many national and international agencies have set up databases of ADR reports for the express purpose of determining the relationship between drugs and adverse reactions that they cause. We formulate the drug-reaction relationship problem as a continuous optimization problem and … Read more
We present computational approaches for optimizing beam angles and fluence maps in Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) planning. We assume that the number of angles to be used for the treatment is given by the treatment planner. A mixed integer programming (MIP) model and a linear programming (LP) model are used to find an optimal … Read more