Program Information
18-Month Clinical Experience of a Linac Daily Quality Assurance (QA) Solution Using Only EPID and OBI
B Cai*, B Sun , S Yaddanapudi , S Goddu , H Li , D Caruthers , J Kavanaugh , S Mutic , Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, MO
Presentations
TU-FG-201-1 (Tuesday, August 2, 2016) 1:45 PM - 3:45 PM Room: 201
Purpose:
To describe the clinical use of a Linear Accelerator (Linac) DailyQA system with only EPID and OBI. To assess the reliability over an 18-month period and improve the robustness of this system based on QA failure analysis.
Methods:
A DailyQA solution utilizing an in-house designed phantom, combined EPID and OBI image acquisitions, and a web-based data analysis and reporting system was commissioned and used in our clinic to measure geometric, dosimetry and imaging components of a Varian Truebeam Linac. During an 18-month period (335 working days), the Daily QA results, including the output constancy, beam flatness and symmetry, uniformity, TPR20/10, MV and KV imaging quality, were collected and analyzed. For output constancy measurement, an independent monthly QA system with an ionization chamber (IC) and annual/incidental TG51 measurements with ADCL IC were performed and cross-compared to Daily QA system. Thorough analyses were performed on the recorded QA failures to evaluate the machine performance, optimize the data analysis algorithm, adjust the tolerance setting and improve the training procedure to prevent future failures.
Results:
A clinical workflow including beam delivery, data analysis, QA report generation and physics approval was established and optimized to suit daily clinical operation. The output tests over the 335 working day period cross-correlated with the monthly QA system within 1.3% and TG51 results within 1%. QA passed with one attempt on 236 days out of 335 days. Based on the QA failures analysis, the Gamma criteria is revised from (1%, 1mm) to (2%, 1mm) considering both QA accuracy and efficiency. Data analysis algorithm is improved to handle multiple entries for a repeating test.
Conclusion:
We described our 18-month clinical experience on a novel DailyQA system using only EPID and OBI. The long term data presented demonstrated the system is suitable and reliable for Linac daily QA.
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