Program Information
A Spreadsheet Based Automatic Trajectory GEnerator (SAGE): An Open Source Tool for Automatic Creation of TrueBeam Developer Mode Robotic Trajectories
A Etmektzoglou*, P Mishra, M Svatos, Varian Medical Systems, Palo Alto, CA
Presentations
SU-F-BRB-16 (Sunday, July 12, 2015) 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM Room: Ballroom B
Purpose:To automate creation and delivery of robotic linac trajectories with TrueBeam Developer Mode, an open source spreadsheet-based trajectory generation tool has been developed, tested and made freely available. The computing power inherent in a spreadsheet environment plus additional functions programmed into the tool insulate users from the underlying schema tedium and allow easy calculation, parameterization, graphical visualization, validation and finally automatic generation of Developer Mode XML scripts which are directly loadable on a TrueBeam linac.
Methods:The robotic control system platform that allows total coordination of potentially all linac moving axes with beam (continuous, step-and-shoot, or combination thereof) becomes available in TrueBeam Developer Mode. Many complex trajectories are either geometric or can be described in analytical form, making the computational power, graphing and programmability available in a spreadsheet environment an easy and ideal vehicle for automatic trajectory generation. The spreadsheet environment allows also for parameterization of trajectories thus enabling the creation of entire families of trajectories using only a few variables. Standard spreadsheet functionality has been extended for powerful movie-like dynamic graphic visualization of the gantry, table, MLC, room, lasers, 3D observer placement and beam centerline all as a function of MU or time, for analysis of the motions before requiring actual linac time.
Results:We used the tool to generate and deliver extended SAD “virtual isocenter” trajectories of various shapes such as parameterized circles and ellipses. We also demonstrated use of the tool in generating linac couch motions that simulate respiratory motion using analytical parameterized functions.
Conclusion:The SAGE tool is a valuable resource to experiment with families of complex geometric trajectories for a TrueBeam Linac. It makes Developer Mode more accessible as a vehicle to quickly translate research ideas into machine readable scripts without programming knowledge. As an open source initiative, it also enables researcher collaboration on future developments.
Funding Support, Disclosures, and Conflict of Interest: I am a full time employee at Varian Medical Systems, Palo Alto, California
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