Repurposing DailyQA3 for an efficient and spot position sensitive daily quality assurance tool for proton therapy

IntroductionDaily quality assurance is an integral part of a radiotherapy workflow to ensure the dose is delivered safely and accurately to the patient. It is performed before the first treatment of the day and needs to be time and cost efficient for a multiple gantries proton center. In this study, we introduced an efficient method to perform QA for output constancy, range verification, spot positioning accuracy and imaging and proton beam isocenter coincidence with DailyQA3.MethodsA stepped acrylic block of specific dimensions is fabricated and placed on top of the DailyQA3 device. Treatment plans comprising of two different spread-out Bragg peaks and five individual spots of 1.0 MU each are designed to be delivered to the device. A mathematical framework to measure the 2D distance between the detectors and individual spot is introduced and play an important role in realizing the spot positioning and centering QA. Lastly, a 5 months trends of the QA for two gantries are presented.ResultsThe outputs are monitored by two ion chambers in the DailyQA3 and a tolerance of +/- 3%$ \pm 3\% $ are used. The range of the SOBPs are monitored by the ratio of ion chamber signals and a tolerance of +/- 1mm$ \pm 1\ {\mathrm{mm}}$ is used. Four diodes at +/- 10cm$ \pm 10\ {\mathrm{cm}}$ from the central ion chambers are used for spot positioning QA, while the central ion chamber is used for imaging and proton beam isocenter coincidence QA. Using the framework, we determined the absolute signal threshold corresponding to the offset tolerance between the individual proton spot and the detector. A 1.5mm$1.5\ {\mathrm{mm}}$ tolerances are used for both the positioning and centering QA. No violation of the tolerances is observed in the 5 months trends for both gantries.ConclusionWith the proposed approach, we can perform four QA items in the TG224 within 10 min.