Dosimetric validation of a GPU-based dose engine for a fast in silico patient-specific quality assurance program in light ion beam therapy.

Background: With rapid evolutions of fast and sophisticated calculation techniques and delivery technologies, clinics are almost facing a daily patient-specific (PS) plan adaptation, which would make a conventional experimental quality assurance (QA) workflow unlikely to be routinely feasible. Therefore, in silico approaches are foreseen by means of second-check independent dose calculation systems possibly handling machine log-files.

Purpose: To validate the in-house developed GPU-dose engine, FRoG, for light ion beam therapy (protons and carbon ions) as a second-check independent calculation system and to integrate machine log-file analysis into the patient-specific quality assurance (PSQA) program.