Program Information
A Novel Method to Account for Ion Chamber Volume Averaging Effect in a Commercial Treatment Planning System Through Convolution
B Barraclough1*, J Li2 , C Liu2 , G Yan2 , (1) J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, (2) Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL
Presentations
TH-E-BRE-3 Thursday 1:00PM - 2:50PM Room: Ballroom EPurpose: Fourier-based deconvolution approaches used to eliminate ion chamber volume averaging effect (VAE) suffer from measurement noise. This work aims to investigate a novel method to account for ion chamber VAE through convolution in a commercial treatment planning system (TPS).
Methods: Beam profiles of various field sizes and depths of an Elekta Synergy were collected with a finite size ion chamber (CC13) to derive a clinically acceptable beam model for a commercial TPS (Pinnacle³), following the vendor-recommended modeling process. The TPS-calculated profiles were then externally convolved with a Gaussian function representing the chamber (σ = chamber radius). The agreement between the convolved profiles and measured profiles was evaluated with a one dimensional Gamma analysis (1%/1mm) as an objective function for optimization. TPS beam model parameters for focal and extra-focal sources were optimized and loaded back into the TPS for new calculation. This process was repeated until the objective function converged using a Simplex optimization method. Planar dose of 30 IMRT beams were calculated with both the clinical and the re-optimized beam models and compared with MapCHECK™ measurements to evaluate the new beam model.
Results: After re-optimization, the two orthogonal source sizes for the focal source reduced from 0.20/0.16 cm to 0.01/0.01 cm, which were the minimal allowed values in Pinnacle. No significant change in the parameters for the extra-focal source was observed. With the re-optimized beam model, average Gamma passing rate for the 30 IMRT beams increased from 92.1% to 99.5% with a 3%/3mm criterion and from 82.6% to 97.2% with a 2%/2mm criterion.
Conclusion: We proposed a novel method to account for ion chamber VAE in a commercial TPS through convolution. The re-optimized beam model, with VAE accounted for through a reliable and easy-to-implement convolution and optimization approach, outperforms the original beam model in standard IMRT QA verification.
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