Goals

The primary goal of this session is to promote greater transparency about the theory and implementation of commercially available tools for adaptive radiotherapy such as deformable image registration, contour propagation and dose mapping. These tools are becoming more prevalent in clinics of every size and staffing level and are used to guide decisions about adaptation and re-planning. Since these tools can impact the cumulative dose distribution that a patient receives, the medical physics community needs to develop a rigorous program of general commissioning, on-going quality assurance and patient specific documentation; similar to what is carried out with dose calculations. Recognizing the importance of such a program, the AAPM created a task group (TG132) to provide guidance in this area. Although the report should be published this year, full implementation of such a program will still require more information from the vendor community about the theory and implementation of the tools they provide. It is hoped the Adapt-a-thon and subsequent discussions and demonstrations will further enhance the communication between the medical physics and vendor communities.

The secondary goal is to develop a comprehensive set of questions for the medical physicist to ask when investigating the various systems available. This set of questions could also form the basis for a request for proposals (RFP) for an adaptive radiotherapy system and part of a comprehensive treatment planning system.

PLEASE NOTE: Commercial systems often involve valuable intellectual property and proprietary information. Naturally, vendors would like to keep this "secret sauce" ... secret, which is completely understandable. The goal here is not to coerce the vendors to divulge this information but to encourage them to provide an appropriate amount of information on theory and implementation so that the medical physicist can understand these systems well enough to ensure their safe and efficient deployment and clinical use. Most vendors do already provide some of this type of information, usually in the form of whitepapers posted on their website.