Tolerance design of patient‐specific range QA using the DMAIC framework in proton therapy

Abstract

DMAIC framework can be used to provide an effective QA by setting customized tolerances. When tolerance design is customized, the quality is reasonably balanced with time and cost demands.

Statistical process control tools for setup reproducibility in quality control practices during nasopharyngeal carcinoma radiotherapy

“…However, it only helps recognize the stability of QC process, but does not determine whether the fractionated treatment plan is implemented, because setup errors are corrected by using daily MVCT scanning. Rah et al also reported that the tolerance overdesign tended to suggest the underlying process was overwhelmingly out of tolerance and might not be justified and proposed that it should be redesigned considering the range uncertainties for the proton beam range tolerance (13) . Consequently, the QC process stability for NPC patient setup can be judged by using of process capability index.…”

“…Compared to the number of articles and conference abstracts for radiation therapy using SPC, the proportion of setup uncertainty in radiation therapy is 14.71% as shown in figure 1. A plethora of papers reports the SPC is applied comprehensively to QC and QA for beam output and symmetry, dose, treatment plan and proton beam range design in radiotherapy, but less for NPC patient setup uncertainty (13)(14)(15)(16) . This is beyond our expectation, so it necessitates us paying more attention to NPC patient positioning reproducibility using SPC tools.…”

Technical Note: Using dual step wedge and 2D scintillator to achieve highly precise and robust proton range quality assurance

“…However, the finite proton range, if not precisely controlled, would cause undesirable dosimetric effects, such as underdosing to the target and overdosing to organs at risk . Hence, proton range quality assurance (QA) is one of the most commonly performed QA tasks during routine machine and patient QA …”