(Wednesday, 7/17/2019) 1:45 PM - 3:45 PM
Room: 304ABC
Linear Accelerators have become increasingly complex over the last several decades, multiplying the required number of QA hours for medical physicists trying to meet standards set out by AAPM Task Group/MPPG reports. Vendors are proactively helping to reduce the QA burden for medical physicists using two strategies: designing simplified, 'closed or black box' systems requiring minimal physics work (Halcyon, Tomo, Zap-X, GK), and providing test tools for their own equipment (Tomo, CK, Varian). Such resources are a great benefit to the busy clinical physicist but this poses the question on how to independently verify the functionality of vendor-provided data, tools and tests procedures. It is possible for medical physicists to collaborate with vendor representatives to set expectations regarding when systems function properly and when they fail and to ultimately design validation procedures on closed/black box systems that are mutually beneficial. In addition, third party software, tools, and equipment can play an essential role in the independent validation process. This session aims to educate the general membership about the topic and initiate a broader discussion about the issue.
Learning objectives:
1) Understand the type of closed/black box systems that a medical physicist may encounter in radiation oncology.
2) Understand the costs and benefits of vendor-provided tools from a medical physics perspective.
3) Understand how vendors and physicists can collaborate to develop independent verification tests of closed/black box systems.
Funding Support, Disclosures, and Conflict of Interest: M Lee is an emlployee of Varian. Jeff Kapatoes is an employee of SNC Inc.
Handouts
Keywords
Taxonomy
TH- External beam- photons: Quality Assurance - Linear accelerator
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