A Systematic Approach to Patient-Specific Quality Assurance for Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy

摘要

We developed the first non-commercial treatment planning system for volumetric modulated arc therapy(VMAT) in the United States. Because VMAT involves multi-parameter modulations, it is imperative to develop a comprehensive, rigorous and yet, practical procedure for routine patient-specific quality assurance(QA). In this paper, we presented our own approach as being currently implemented in our institution.Our patient-specific QA procedure involves multi-levels: pre-treatment QA,on-treatment QA, and posttreatment QA. The pre-treatment QA focuses on dosimetry verification, which is done with the commercial Map CHECK in Map PHAN mounted on an isocentric mounting fixture(IMF). This method is also referred to the fixed-gantry technique,i.e., the beams always remain perpendicular to the detector plane. The on-treatment QA involves in vivo optically stimulated luminescent dosimetry(OSLD).Prior to the treatment, two nano Dot TM OSLD dosimeters are placed on the patient abdomen under 1 cm bolus at the isocenter location. The irradiated dosimeters are then read by a nano Dot TM reader and the average reading of the two is calculated. The post-treatment QA involves the analysis of the Dyna Log and DLog files. The Dyna Log is a treatment log file that contains the planned and actual leaf positions at a given gantry angle. The DLog is a treatment log file that contains the planned segmented treatment table(STT) and the corresponding segment boundary samples, i.e., the actual delivered MU and gantry angle increment at each control point.