An automatic dose verification system for adaptive radiotherapy for helical tomotherapy

Xiaohu Mo, Mingli Chen, Donald Parnell, Gustavo Olivera, Daniel Galmarini, Weiguo Lu

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Purpose: During a typical 5-7 week treatment of external beam radiotherapy, there are potential differences between planned patient's anatomy and positioning, such as patient weight loss, or treatment setup. The discrepancies between planned and delivered doses resulting from these differences could be significant, especially in IMRT where dose distributions tightly conforms to target volumes while avoiding organs-at-risk. We developed an automatic system to monitor delivered dose using daily imaging. Methods: For each treatment, a merged image is generated by registering the daily pre-treatment setup image and planning CT using treatment position information extracted from the Tomotherapy archive. The treatment dose is then computed on this merged image using our in-house convolution-superposition based dose calculator implemented on GPU. The deformation field between merged and planning CT is computed using the Morphon algorithm. The planning structures and treatment doses are subsequently warped for analysis and dose accumulation. All results are saved in DICOM format with private tags and organized in a database. Due to the overwhelming amount of information generated, a customizable tolerance system is used to flag potential treatment errors or significant anatomical changes. A web-based system and a DICOM-RT viewer were developed for reporting and reviewing the results. Results: More than 30 patients were analysed retrospectively. Our in-house dose calculator passed 97% gamma test evaluated with 2% dose difference and 2mm distance-to-agreement compared with Tomotherapy calculated dose, which is considered sufficient for adaptive radiotherapy purposes. Evaluation of the deformable registration through visual inspection showed acceptable and consistent results, except for cases with large or unrealistic deformation. Our automatic flagging system was able to catch significant patient setup errors or anatomical changes. Conclusions: We developed an automatic dose verification system that quantifies treatment doses, and provides necessary information for adaptive planning without impeding clinical workflows.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number012075
JournalJournal of Physics: Conference Series
Volume489
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2014
Event17th International Conference on the Use of Computers in Radiation Therapy, ICCR 2013 - Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Duration: May 6 2013May 9 2013

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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