New automatic quality control methods for geometrical treatment planning system tools in external conformal radiotherapy

摘要

Quality control of external conformal radiotherapy treatment planning systems softwares is a crucial issue. The treatment quality depends directly on the quality of treatment planning systems (TPS). Radiotherapists need to be sure that softwares compute accurately each parameter of the treatment. This paper focuses on the quality control of geometrical tools of the treatment planning systems, i.e. the virtual simulation software. These TPS compute the geometrical part of the treatment. They define the targets and shapes of the irradiation beams. Four operations done by these TPS are examined in this work. The quality control of the auto-contouring, auto-margin, isocenter computation and collimator conformation tools is treated with a new method based on Digital Test Objects (DTO). Standard methods for this quality control have been set up from the development of some Physical Test Objects (PTO). These methods are time-consuming, incomplete and inaccurate. Results are biased by the CT-scanner acquisition of PTOs and error evaluation is done with the graphic tools of the TPS. Our method uses DTOs and allows for an automated qualitative error evaluation. DTOs present many advantages for TPS quality control.They lead to a fast, accurate, complete and automatic quality assessment. Special DTOs have been developed to control the TPS tools mentioned previously as well as their automatic result analysis methods. A TPS has been controlled with these test objects. The quality assessment shows some errors and highlights some particularities in the TPS tools functioning. This quality control was then compared with the standard quality control.