NCS subcommittee on IMRT Quality Assurance
The last decade, IMRT has evolved into a standard treatment modality within the Dutch and Belgian radiotherapy communities. So far, most institutes have implemented IMRT, static or dynamic, for one or more tumor sites with varying degrees of complexity. Further, an increasing number of institutes is introducing intensity modulated rotational techniques. This NCS subcommittee focuses on the quality assurance required to introduce and maintain IMRT and rotational techniques in clinical practice including the following topics:
- machine acceptance / QA
- beam modeling and small field dosimetry
- patient specific pretreatment / in vivo dosimetry and pass criteria
- delivery
The committee aims at a comprehensive set of tests, including frequency and tolerances, and practical guidelines or references to relevant literature. These guidelines should serve as a guide to good-practice, not as an exhaustive overview of all adequate procedures. They should provide a practical strategy to setup a QA framework for IMRT, and an overview of the current status of QA for rotational techniques. These recommendations can be used to benchmark in-house QA protocols.
Members of this NCS subcommittee:
- Edwin van der Wal (RCWest, Den Haag, Chairman, e.vanderwal-at-hagaziekenhuis.nl])
- Jan Wiersma (AMC, Amsterdam, secretary)
- Alle Henk Ausma (RIF, Leeuwarden)
- Luc Bos (MCA, Alkmaar)
- Johan Cuijpers (VU, Amsterdam)
- Lars Murrer (Maastro, Maastricht)
- Geert Pittomvils (UZGent, Gent)
- Milan Tomsej (CHU, Charleroi)
- Jeroen van de Kamer (NKI-AVL, Amsterdam, representative of the NCS board)