Program Information

A Strategy to Consolidate the Image Database of a VERO Unit Into a Radiotherapy Management System

Y Yan

Y Yan¹*, P Medin¹ , J Yordy¹ , B Zhao¹ , S Jiang¹ , (1) UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX

Presentations

SU-E-J-129 Sunday 3:00PM - 6:00PM Room: Exhibit Hall

Purpose: To present a strategy to integrate the imaging database of a VERO unit with a treatment management system (TMS) to improve clinical workflow and consolidate image data to facilitate clinical quality control and documentation.

Methods: A VERO unit is equipped with both kV and MV imaging capabilities for IGRT treatments. It has its own imaging database behind a firewall. It has been a challenge to transfer images on this unit to a TMS in a radiation therapy clinic so that registered images can be reviewed remotely with an approval or rejection record. In this study, a software system, iPump-VERO, was developed to connect VERO and a TMS in our clinic. The patient database folder on the VERO unit was mapped to a read-only folder on a file server outside VERO firewall. The application runs on a regular computer with the read access to the patient database folder. It finds the latest registered images and fuses them in one of six predefined patterns before sends them via DICOM connection to the TMS. The residual image registration errors will be overlaid on the fused image to facilitate image review.

Results: The fused images of either registered kV planar images or CBCT images are fully DICOM compatible. A sentinel module is built to sense new registered images with negligible computing resources from the VERO ExacTrac imaging computer. It takes a few seconds to fuse registered images and send them to the TMS. The whole process is automated without any human intervention.

Conclusion: Transferring images in DICOM connection is the easiest way to consolidate images of various sources in your TMS. Technically the attending does not have to go to the VERO treatment console to review image registration prior delivery. It is a useful tool for a busy clinic with a VERO unit.


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