What is QA in radiation therapy?

‘Quality assurance in radiotherapy’ is all procedures that ensure consistency of the medical prescription, and safe fulfilment of that prescription, as regards the dose to the target volume, together with minimal dose to normal tissue, minimal exposure of personnel and adequate patient monitoring aimed Page 2 CHAPTER …

What is patient QA?

A patient-specific quality assurance (QA) test is conducted to verify the accuracy of dose delivery. It generally consists of three verification processes: the absolute point dose difference, the planar dose differences at each gantry angle, and the planar dose differences by 3D composite irradiation.

What is the primary purpose of patient specific IMRT QA measurements?

Patient-specific IMRT quality assurance is one of essential tasks to ensure accurate dose delivery to the patient [14–17]. It often consists of measuring point doses and 2D dose distributions in a phantom. Ion-chambers and 2D arrays of ion-chambers or diodes have been used for this purpose. Dong et al.

What is quality control and quality assurance Qaqc in radiation therapy?

Quality assurance and quality control includes every activity which will affect the patient’s journey through the clinical imaging or radiotherapy service and includes use of ionizing and non-ionizing modalities.

What do you mean by quality control?

Quality control (QC) is a process through which a business seeks to ensure that product quality is maintained or improved. Quality control involves testing units and determining if they are within the specifications for the final product.

What is gamma analysis?

In intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), gamma analysis is usually used to analyze the difference between the TPS-outputed and the actually measured dose distribution to evaluate the degree of dose deviation caused by various reasons during the execution of the plan, further to determine whether a plan is to …

How is patient specific quality assurance used in radiotherapy?

A patient specific quality assurance program has been developed to facilitate the clinical implementation of intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) delivered using a micro-multileaf collimator. The methodology includes several dosimetric tasks that are performed prior to the treatment of each patient.

Why do we need integrated QA in radiotherapy?

Integrated QA provides standardization and workflow efficiency. Independent QA removes bias, assuring more treatment and machine issues will be caught.

When to use patient-specific QA for IMRT?

Patient-specific QA for IMRT, SBRT, SRS, etc. should be documented and approved prior to initiation of treatment. It is recommended that the facility establish a standard for QA and set their pass/ fail criteria. A qualified medical physicist (QMP) must review each patient’s chart on a weekly basis.

How to transfer patient plan to a QA Phantom?

1. Transfer patient plan to a QA phantom • Dose recalculated (homogeneous) on phantom – any dose calculation errors would not be revealed 2. Perform QA prior to treatment • Subsequent data changes/corruption may result in systematic errors for all subsequent patients 3. The volume of data impossible to monitor and verify manually