[Routine use of electronic portal imaging. Positioning verification in 922 successive pelvic fields]

Treatment reproducibility is a major criterion of quality assurance in radiation therapy. During each course, the same dose should be delivered in the same volume of irradiation. Today, portal imaging devices can be used routinely to check and correct patient positioning before much of the daily irradiation has been delivered. In this study we used the Portal Vision Varian (PVV) system during pelvic irradiation in 16 patients. This device can automatically acquire portal images in the first seconds of each course. Observed discrepancies are directly classified by the radiation oncologist according to their type (cranio-caudal, lateral, antero-posterior) and severity (correction of patient positioning is necessary or not). In case of error, patient positioning is corrected before the end of irradiation. Of the 922 portals analysed with PVV, 901 could be analysed (97%). Two hundred and ninety-nine positioning discrepancies were observed (33%) with 59 of them leading to correction (6%). Most of the time, these errors concerned antero-posterior portals. Finally, each patient had an average of 18 to 19 discrepancies which were mainly of no importance for treatment quality. Nevertheless, real errors leading to correction were observed in 14 patients (88%) with an average of four per patient. In some patients many errors occurred, while in others only a few. These shifts were not related to patient weight and thickness but probably a portal dimension. In summary, we think that during pelvic irradiation a portal imaging device should be used daily to improve treatment quality. This system can help the radiation oncologist to discover many positioning errors (an average of four) in the majority of patients (88%) and to correct them before the end of irradiation.