American Association of Physicists in Medicine Radiation Therapy Committee Task Group 53: Quality assurance for clinical radiotherapy treatment planning

Abstract

In recent years, the sophistication and complexity of clinical treatment planning and treatment planning systems has increased significantly, particularly including three-dimensional (3D) treatment planning systems, and the use of conformal treatment planning and delivery techniques. This has led to the need for a comprehensive set of quality assurance (QA) guidelines that can be applied to clinical treatment planning. This document is the report of Task Group 53 of the Radiation Therapy Committee of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. The purpose of this report is to guide and assist the clinical medical physicist in developing and implementing a comprehensive but viable program of quality assurance for modern radiotherapy treatment planning. The scope of the QA needs for treatment planning is quite broad, encompassing image-based definition of patient anatomy, 3D beam descriptions for complex beams including multileaf collimator apertures, 3D dose calculation algorithms, and complex plan evaluation tools including dose volume histograms. The Task Group recommends an organizational framework for the task of creating a QA program which is individualized to the needs of each institution and addresses the issues of acceptance testing, commissioning the planning system and planning process, routine quality assurance, and ongoing QA of the planning process. This report, while not prescribing specific QA tests, provides the framework and guidance to allow radiation oncology physicists to design comprehensive and practical treatment planning QA programs for their clinics.

Verification of dose calculations with a clinical treatment planning system based on a point kernel dose engine

“…, 21 , 22 Ahnesjö and Aspradakis 18 give an accuracy level of 3% in the TPS dose calculation in order to achieve an overall uncertainty of 5% in the absorbed dose to the patient. There exist, however, situations where the calculations are outside these limits and this includes wedge output and dose calculations in the build up region.…”

Verification of the accuracy of a photon dose‐calculation algorithm

“…The report on quality assurance of radiation treatment planning produced by the AAPM TG‐53 6 specified acceptance criteria in terms of the percent difference and distance difference. Consequently, these criteria were used for comparing the data in this study.…”

“…Given that several clinically significant situations were not included in the 13 TG‐23 test cases, the AAPM Radiation Therapy Committee Task Group 53 (TG‐53) report 6 suggested several photon dose‐calculation verification situations. The test cases generated in the present study as well as the methodology used in generating these test cases evolved from the TG‐23 and TG‐53 work.…”

COMP report: CPQR technical quality control guidelines for treatment planning systems

“…However, even the most accurate algorithm will generate inaccurate dosimetry predictions if the clinical radiation beams are not accurately modeled. Recommendations do exist for tolerances on photon beam modeling 5, 6…”