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Published on: April 17, 2012
Quality control study of cervical cancer interstitial brachytherapy treatment plans using statistical process control
Xiao Chen1, Xiangxiang Shi1, Huaiwen Zhang2
1Department of Oncology, The Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University, Sichuan, China.
Objective:
This study explored using statistical process control for quality control of cervical cancer interstitial brachytherapy treatment plans.
Materials And Methods:
For retrospective analysis, interstitial brachytherapy treatment plans were divided into first (n = 300) and second phases (n = 200). The first phase was chronologically divided 2:1 into training and validation sets. The Dn2cm3 (D2cm3 divided by the high-risk clinical target volume D90) of the organs at risk (the bladder, rectum, and sigmoid colon) were analyzed to draw individual control charts. Process capability analysis charts were drawn, and the statistical process capability was evaluated using the process capability index Cpk. The centerline of the organ at risk dose in the first-phase plan's training set was used as the optimization parameter for the second-phase dataset plan.
Results:
The Dn2cm3 centerlines for the bladder, rectum, and sigmoid colon were 0.6980, 0.5440, and 0.4910 in the training set and 0.6845, 0.4528, and 0.4144 in the second phase, respectively. The first-phase δ values were 0.0099, 0.0530, and 0.0268, respectively. The process capability analysis for the first and second phases showed that all indicators had a Cpk >1.
Conclusion:
For all organs at risk, the Dn2cm3 centerlines were lower in the second phase than in the first phase, indicating that quality control of cervical cancer interstitial brachytherapy treatment plans continuously improved through statistical process control. This method is simple and practical and warrants promotion for application in radiotherapy treatment plan quality control.
