Automated testing platform for radiotherapy treatment planning scripts

Realizing the potential of user-developed automation software interacting with a treatment planning system (TPS) requires rigorous testing to ensure patient safety and data integrity. We developed an automated test platform to allow comparison of the treatment planning database before and after the execution of a write-enabled script interacting with a commercial TPS (Eclipse, Varian Medical Systems, Palo Alto, CA) using the vendor-provided Eclipse Scripting Application Programming Interface (ESAPI). The C#-application known as Write-Enable Script Testing Engine (WESTE) serializes the treatment planning objects (Patient, Structure Set, PlanSetup) accessible through ESAPI, and then compares the serialization acquired before and after the execution of the script being tested, documenting identified differences to highlight the changes made to the treatment planning data. The first two uses of WESTE demonstrated that the testing platform could acquire and analyze the data quickly (<4 s per test case) and facilitate the clinical implementation of write-enabled scripts.