A system of computer programs has been created to allow the entry of radiotherapy treatment details as defined by the physician, the verification of the machine parameters at every treatment, and the recording of the entire course of treatment. Various utility programs are available to simplify the use and maintenance of the system. The majority of the code is written in FORTRAN-77, the remainder in MACRO-11. The system has been implemented on a PDP 11/60 minicomputer for use with a Mevatron linear accelerator, the implementation required minor hardware changes to the accelerator.
A three-dimensional dynamic cardiac phantom suitable for quality control of equilibrium gated nuclear cardiographic procedures is described. Its flexible microprocessor based design provides an absolute standard for ejection fraction determination, ventricular volume quantitation, and physiologically gated single photon emission computed tomography. The cost of the phantom is comparable to that of commercially available phantoms suitable for ejection fraction quality control alone.
Linear accelerators use water cooling systems to ensure that certain components operate at specific temperatures. The water cooling system used on a Siemens Mevatron 77 has been found by us to be inadequate for our purposes for three major reasons. First, the controller is not able to regulate the machine temperature accurately when the beam is on for more than 10 min. Second, there is a high risk of failure at our site due to a high level of impurities in the utility water, and finally, changes in the temperature of the utility water necessitate adjustments to the temperature controller. A microprocessor-based temperature controller has been designed and built for use with a Mevatron 77. The three areas of concern mentioned have been eliminated by the use of the new controller.
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