Purpose: Linear accelerator quality assurance (QA) in radiation therapy is a time consuming but fundamental part of ensuring the performance characteristics of radiation delivering machines. The goal of this work is to develop an automated and standardized QA plan generation and analysis system in the Oncology Information System (OIS) to streamline the QA process.
Methods: Automating the QA process includes two software components: the AutoQA Builder to generate daily, monthly, quarterly, and miscellaneous periodic linear accelerator QA plans within the Treatment Planning System (TPS) and the AutoQA Analysis to analyze images collected on the Electronic Portal Imaging Device (EPID) allowing for a rapid analysis of the acquired QA images. To verify the results of the automated QA analysis, results were compared to the current standard for QA assessment for the jaw junction, light-radiation coincidence, picket fence, and volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) QA plans across three linacs and over a 6-month period.
Results: The AutoQA Builder application has been utilized clinically 322 times to create QA patients, construct phantom images, and deploy common periodic QA tests across multiple institutions, linear accelerators, and physicists. Comparing the AutoQA Analysis results with our current institutional QA standard the mean difference of the ratio of intensity values within the field-matched junction and ball-bearing position detection was 0.012 ± 0.053 (P = 0.159) and is 0.011 ± 0.224 mm (P = 0.355), respectively. Analysis of VMAT QA plans resulted in a maximum percentage difference of 0.3%.
Conclusion: The automated creation and analysis of quality assurance plans using multiple APIs can be of immediate benefit to linear accelerator quality assurance efficiency and standardization. QA plan creation can be done without following tedious procedures through API assistance, and analysis can be performed inside of the clinical OIS in an automated fashion.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/acm2.13288 | DOI Listing |
Sci Adv
January 2025
Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, 91405 Orsay, France.
Charge transport in materials has an impact on a wide range of devices based on semiconductor, battery, or superconductor technology. Charge transport in sliding charge density waves (CDW) differs from all others in that the atomic lattice is directly involved in the transport process. To obtain an overall picture of the structural changes associated to the collective transport, the large coherent x-ray beam generated by an x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) source was used.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimers Dement
December 2024
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
Background: Recent studies suggest that iron and neuroinflammation are key components of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) pathology. Ferrous Fe can cause oxidative stress and cellular toxicity, but it is unknown to what extent Fe is elevated in AD, in particular with the hippocampus. To answer this question, we quantified iron oxidation state in frozen human brain hippocampi.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRadiat Oncol J
December 2024
Department of Radiation Oncology, Heavy Ion Therapy Research Institute, Yonsei Cancer Center, Yonsei University Health System, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Purpose: This report offers a detailed examination of the inception and current state of the Heavy-ion Therapy Center (HITC) at the Yonsei Cancer Center (YCC), setting it apart as the world's first center equipped with a fixed beam and two superconducting gantries for carbon-ion radiation therapy (CIRT).
Materials And Methods: Preparations for CIRT at YCC began in 2013; accordingly, this center has completed a decade of meticulous planning and culminating since the operational commencement of the HITC in April 2023.
Results: This report elaborates on the clinical preparation for adopting CIRT in Korea.
Sci Rep
January 2025
Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1, INL, UMR5270, CNRS, INSA Lyon, Ecole Centrale de Lyon, CPE Lyon, 69622, Villeurbanne, France.
Synchrotron microbeam radiotherapy (MRT), which has entered the clinical transfer phase, requires the development of appropriate quality assurance (QA) tools due to very high dose rates and spatial hyperfractionation. A microstrip plastic scintillating detector system with associated modules was proposed in the context of real-time MRT QA. A prototype of such a system with 105 scintillating microstrips was developed and tested under MRT conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA.
X-ray crystallography is one of the leading tools to analyze the 3-D structure, and therefore, function of proteins and other biological macromolecules. Traditional methods of mounting individual crystals for X-ray diffraction analysis can be tedious and result in damage to fragile protein crystals. Furthermore, the advent of multi-crystal and serial crystallography methods explicitly require the mounting of larger numbers of crystals.
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