%0 Journal Article
%T Dose-volume histogram quality assurance for linac-based treatment planning systems
%A Gossman Michael
%A Bank Morris
%J Journal of Medical Physics
%D 2010
%I Medknow Publications
%X Dose-volume histograms provide key information to radiation oncologists when they assess the adequacy of a patient treatment plan in radiation therapy. It is important therefore that all clinically relevant data be accurate. In this article we present the first quality assurance routine involving a direct comparison of planning system results with the results obtained from independent hand calculations. Given a known three-dimensional (3-D) structure such as a parallelepiped, a simple beam arrangement, and known physics beam data, a time-efficient and reproducible method for verifying the accuracy of volumetric statistics (DVH) from a radiation therapy treatment planning system (TPS) can be employed rapidly, satisfying the QA requirements for (TPS) commissioning, upgrades, and annual checks. Using this method, the maximum disagreement was only 1.7% for 6 MV and 1.3% for 18 MV photon energies. The average accuracy was within 0.6% for 6 MV and 0.4% for 18 MV for all depth-dose results. A 2% disagreement was observed with the treatment planning system DVH from defined volume comparison to the known structure dimensions.
%K Dose
%K dose-volume
%K dose-volume histogram
%K histogram
%K quality assurance
%K treatment planning system
%K Volume
%U http://www.jmp.org.in/article.asp?issn=0971-6203;year=2010;volume=35;issue=4;spage=197;epage=201;aulast=Gossman