Program Information
An Automated Treatment Plan Quality Assurance Program for Tandem and Ovoid High Dose-Rate Brachytherapy
J Tan*, F Shi , B Hrycushko , P Medin , S Stojadinovic , A Pompos , M Yang , K Albuquerque , X Jia , The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Ctr, Dallas, TX
Presentations
TU-AB-201-2 (Tuesday, July 14, 2015) 7:30 AM - 9:30 AM Room: 201
Purpose: For tandem and ovoid (T&O) HDR brachytherapy in our clinic, it is required that the planning physicist manually capture ~10 images during planning, perform a secondary dose calculation and generate a report, combine them into a single PDF document, and upload it to a record-and-verify system to prove to an independent plan checker that the case was planned correctly. Not only does this slow down the already time-consuming clinical workflow, the PDF document also limits the number of parameters that can be checked. To solve these problems, we have developed a web-based automatic quality assurance (QA) program.
Methods: We set up a QA server accessible through a web-interface. A T&O plan and CT images are exported as DICOMRT files and uploaded to the server. The software checks 13 geometric features, e.g. if the dwell positions are reasonable, and 10 dosimetric features, e.g. secondary dose calculations via TG43 formalism and D2cc to critical structures. A PDF report is automatically generated with errors and potential issues highlighted. It also contains images showing important geometric and dosimetric aspects to prove the plan was created following standard guidelines.
Results: The program has been clinically implemented in our clinic. In each of the 58 T&O plans we tested, a 14-page QA report was automatically generated. It took ~45 sec to export the plan and CT images and ~30 sec to perform the QA tests and generate the report. In contrast, our manual QA document preparation tooks on average ~7 minutes under optimal conditions and up to 20 minutes when mistakes were made during the document assembly.
Conclusion: We have tested the efficiency and effectiveness of an automated process for treatment plan QA of HDR T&O cases. This software was shown to improve the workflow compared to our conventional manual approach.
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