Dose quality metrics are used to quantify potential clinical outcomes for radiotherapy treatment plans. The reporting and auditing of these metrics is an important part of the quality assurance process at a centre. Analysing large amounts of this data is time consuming – many values need to be transcribed from the planning system manually. This problem lead to the development of TADA, the Treatment and Dose Assessor.
This software has been developed in the C# language, and utilises the FO-DICOM library for parsing DICOM information. Treatment plan information (including the beam arrangement), the planning system dose calculations and the structure definitions are used to generate a number of dose quality metrics, including dose-volume data, conformality indices, equivalent uniform dose values, beam complexity metrics; exporting generated data in both human-readable and .CSV format for analysis.
Calculated dose metrics can be automatically compared against clinical objectives, such as those of the QUANTEC report, Hansen and Roach handbook, or trial guidelines. Reports are generated detailing whether such objectives are met.
The software is able to process large numbers of plans in a batch – aggregating generated values on a per-volume basis, producing data in a format ideal for correlation with clinical outcomes.
Beyond the software’s application in auditing dosimetric quality for individual centres or multi-centre trials, there is a potential application in the quantitative assessment of student work in an academic environment.
Aspects of this software have been discussed in:
- S. B. Crowe, T. Kairn, N. Middlebrook, B. Hill, R. T. Knight, J. Kenny, C. M. Langton, J. V. Trapp, “Development of a dose assessment tool for the auditing of radiotherapy treatment dosimetric quality” (abstract), Australasian Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine 36(1): 74, 2013
The software requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5, available on PC systems running Microsoft Windows Vista / 7 / 8. The installation files can be found here.
Main screen of the TADA application
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