Poster - Thur Eve - 54: A software solution for ongoing DVH quality assurance in radiation therapy

A program has been developed in MATLAB for use in quality assurance of treatment planning of radiation therapy. It analyzes patient DVH files and compiles dose volume data for review, trending, comparison and analysis.

Patient DVH files are exported from the Eclipse treatment planning system and saved according to treatment sites and date. Currently analysis is available for 4 treatment sites; Prostate, Prostate Bed, Lung, and Upper GI, with two functions for data report and analysis: patient-specific and organ-specific. The patient-specific function loads one patient DVH file and reports the user-specified dose volume data of organs and targets. These data can be compiled to an external file for a third party analysis. The organ-specific function extracts a requested dose volume of an organ from the DVH files of a patient group and reports the statistics over this population. A graphical user interface is utilized to select clinical sites, function and structures, and input user's requests.

We have implemented this program in planning quality assurance at our center. The program has tracked the dosimetric improvement in GU sites after VMAT was implemented clinically. It has generated dose volume statistics for different groups of patients associated with technique or time range.

This program allows reporting and statistical analysis of DVH files. It is an efficient tool for the planning quality control in radiation therapy.