Program Information
Quality Assurance of IT Infrastructure for Radiation Therapy
L Zhan*, E Osei , R Jiang , Grand River Rergional Cancer Center, Kitchener, ON
Presentations
SU-I-GPD-P-21 (Sunday, July 30, 2017) 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM Room: Exhibit Hall
Purpose: Radiation therapy (RT) is progressing rapidly in recent years. As a result, it relies more than ever before on computational facilities and technologies. A well-designed and well-maintained IT infrastructure becomes essential in running a RT program. Quality assurance (QA) is a key procedure in a radiation program. Both patient-specific QAs and non-patient specific QAs are well established in almost every aspect. One exception is the QAs for IT infrastructure. Even though there are some guidelines available that covers some IT QA, they mainly focused on the data flow but not the infrastructure. We propose our preliminary recommendations for doing such QAs for IT infrastructure on a regular basis.
Methods: For a radiotherapy program, a typical IT infrastructure contains the following key components: SAN storage, domain controllers, DNS servers, network switches, OIS servers, interface server, TPS workstations, office computers, CT and other imaging systems, Linac and other treatment systems, PACS, backup system, Citrix or other terminal service servers, network firewall, and anti-virus solution. Both physical servers and virtual servers can be used in this environment. For a well-maintained IT infrastructure, it should be tolerable to partial failure. In the extreme case, it should be able to back to service with minimal downtime.
Results: The QAs below are recommended to be performed on a regular basis: Uninterrupted Power Supply (both the device and its connection; redundancy (power, storage network, server network, key servers); disk space (servers and SAN/Datastore); backup (contents, retention rule) and restore (file, disk, machine); automatic notification; and emergency preparation (host file, manual plan transfer, and disk images).
Conclusion: There is a lack of guidelines in performing QA for IT infrastructures in supporting today’s RT program. We present here our preliminary QA recommendations for maintaining a healthy IT infrastructure and minimizing downtime.
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