Validating a framework for Pinnacle plan conversion and archival

The Pinnacle treatment planning system support ends after December 31, 2026. As access to patient treatment records is necessary for continued care, a validated method to access and use this historic treatment planning data is needed.

Sun Nuclear Gateway was used to convert over 20,000 patients stored in the TAR format for 8 versions of Pinnacle and archive this data into DICOM formatted images, structures, and dose re-sampled to 2 mm. Using this solution, a total of 800 patients were automatically converted and pushed to ProKnow, a commercial cloud-based RT-PACS. An initial quality check was performed to verify that the data was converted and associated correctly. Twenty-five random patients were then validated for each version of Pinnacle by reviewing plan name, the MU per beam, structures, max dose point, the number of beams, and the number of fractions. For each Pinnacle version, a 1%/1 mm 3D gamma analysis between the Pinnacle exported and the Gateway converted RT dose for a random plan was performed. The amount of space and time required to archive Pinnacle plans to DICOM format was recorded.

The average patient Pinnacle TAR size was 687.38 ± 599.62 MB and required 120 ± 49s to archive with an average conversion size of 155 ± 26 MB. A 2% initial archival error was observed that was remedied by repushing the affected patients to ProKnow. A conversion error rate of 0.5% was observed for the described validation process for the 200 patients plans. The average 1%/1 mm 3D gamma analysis pass rate was 99.96%.

Gateway has been validated as a conversion solution of TAR data to DICOM for Pinnacle versions 7.4f, 8.0d, 8.0m, 9.0, 9.2, 9.8, 9.10, and 16.2.