Program Information
Varian Portal Dosimetry Accuracy at Detecting Simulated Delivery Errors
J Gordon*, M Bellon, K Barton, M Gulam, I Chetty, Henry Ford Health System, Dept. Radiation Oncology, Detroit, MI
Presentations
SU-E-J-235 Sunday 3:00PM - 6:00PM Room: Exhibit HallPurpose: To use receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to quantify the Varian Portal Dosimetry (VPD) application’s ability to detect delivery errors in IMRT fields.
Methods: EPID and VPD were calibrated/commissioned using vendor-recommended procedures. Five clinical plans comprising 56 modulated fields were analyzed using VPD. Treatment sites were: pelvis, prostate, brain, orbit, and base of tongue. Delivery was on a Varian Trilogy linear accelerator at 6MV using a Millenium120 multi-leaf collimator. Image pairs (VPD-predicted and measured) were exported in dicom format. Each detection test imported an image pair into Matlab, optionally inserted a simulated error (rectangular region with intensity raised or lowered) into the measured image, performed 3%/3mm gamma analysis, and saved the gamma distribution. For a given error, 56 negative tests (without error) were performed, one per 56 image pairs. Also, 560 positive tests (with error) with randomly selected image pairs and randomly selected in-field error location. Images were classified as errored (or error-free) if percent pixels with γ<κ was < (or ≥) τ. (Conventionally, κ=1 and τ=90%.) A ROC curve was generated from the 616 tests by varying τ. For a range of κ and τ, true/false positive/negative rates were calculated. This procedure was repeated for inserted errors of different sizes. VPD was considered to reliably detect an error if images were correctly classified as errored or error-free at least 95% of the time, for some κ₊τ combination.
Results: 20mm² errors with intensity altered by ≥20% could be reliably detected, as could 10mm² errors with intensity was altered by ≥50%. Errors with smaller size or intensity change could not be reliably detected.
Conclusion: Varian Portal Dosimetry using 3%/3mm gamma analysis is capable of reliably detecting only those fluence errors that exceed the stated sizes. Images containing smaller errors can pass mathematical analysis, though may be detected by visual inspection.
Funding Support, Disclosures, and Conflict of Interest: This work was not funded by Varian Oncology Systems. Some authors have other work partly funded by Varian Oncology Systems.
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