TU-D-BRA-00: Treatment Planning System Commissioning and QA

Introduction Treatment planning systems (TPS) are a cornerstone of modern radiation therapy. Errors in their commissioning or use can have a devastating impact on many patients. To support safe and high quality care, medical physicists must conduct efficient and proper commissioning, good clinical integration, and ongoing quality assurance (QA) of the TPS. AAPM Task Group 53 and related publications have served as seminal benchmarks for TPS commissioning and QA over the past two decades. Over the same time, continuing innovations have made the TPS even more complex and more central to the clinical process. Medical goals are now expressed in terms of the dose and margins around organs and tissues that are delineated from multiple imaging modalities (CT, MR and PET); and even temporally resolved (i.e., 4D) imaging. This information is passed on to optimization algorithms to establish accelerator movements that are programmed directly for IMRT, VMAT and stereotactic treatments. These advances have made commissioning and QA of the TPS much more challenging. This education session reviews up-to-date experience and guidance on this subject; including the recently published AAPM Medical Physics Practice Guideline (MPPG) #5 “Commissioning and QA of Treatment Planning Dose Calculations: Megavoltage Photon and Electron Beams”. TPS Commissioning and QA: Planning and Monitoring - (Salomons) This session will review publications and other resources relating to TPS commissioning and QA. A knowledge-based framework for selecting and commissioning a TPS will be presented, focusing on: Plan requirements, Algorithm capabilities, Software design and connectivity, Process integration, and Training. The spatial and dosimetric accuracies demanded of the modern TPS have exceeded the capabilities of our measurement tools. As a result, important information can sometimes be hidden in in the measurement noise. Control charts allow one to distinguish between systematic trends and random noise for commonly repeated measurements such as individual plan measurements for IMRT and VMAT treatments. The application of control charts to such measurements will be presented. Recommendations of MPPG #5 and practical implementation strategies - (Smilowitz) The recently published recommendations from Task Group No. 244, Medical Physics Practice Guideline on Commissioning and QA of Treatment Planning Dose Calculations: Megavoltage Photon and Electron Beams will be presented. The recommendations f