(Sunday, 7/29/2018) 4:00 PM - 4:55 PM
Room: Karl Dean Ballroom A1
Purpose: The goals of this work were i) to determine the percentage of routine radiation therapy plan checks that may be entirely automated through the development of a dedicated software tool; and ii) to develop a practical and efficient application to be used in the clinic, with the aim of improving both efficiency and sensitivity of the plan checking process.
Methods: A total of 41 checkpoints were used in the manual checking process for treatment plans. Checkpoints were categorized as addressing i) input data for planning, ii) plan settings/documentation, iii) plan physical parameters and iv) plan dosimetric parameters. The Eclipse Scripting Application Programming Interface (ESAPI) was used to develop a binary plug-in application for Eclipse 13.6 (Varian Medical Systems) that operates on the active treatment plan. Automated checks used tolerances customized according to whether the plan was developed for standard RT, stereotactic cranial, or stereotactic body radiation therapy. The application provides text output including a log of the analysis, a set of warnings (i.e. possible irregularities or inconsistencies) and a set of errors. It also includes an interface for completion of checks manually where full automation was not possible. The application provides a report that may be included in the patient's electronic chart. Following deployment, the time required for the plan checking process was estimated with comparison to for the completely manual approach.
Results: 78% of all of the manual checks could be completely automated, including 75% of input data, 63% of plan settings/documentation, 81% of plan physical parameter and 89% of dosimetric parameter checks. Implementation of the checking application approximately halves the time required to perform the plan checking process.
Conclusion: Development of a dedicated plan checking application using ESAPI automated the process for the medical physicist for the majority of checkpoints, substantially increasing the efficiency of the process.
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