E0407 Physical Quality Assurance in Radiation Therapy

In the departments „Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology E040“ and „Clinical Cooperation Unit Radiation Oncology E050“ patients are treated at two linear accelerators with image guided adaptive radiotherapy methods. In this context research is especially focused on new methods for highly conformal radiotherapy techniques which account for inter- and intrafractional tumour and organ motion.

The work group “Physical Quality Assurance in Radiotherapy” (E0407) provides the medical physics experts and is responsible for the physical part of the radiotherapy routine and the implementation of new methods into clinical workflow.

Beyond the physical supervision and support of the radiotherapy our work is focused on the following main research activities:

• Development and optimization of methods for patient specific quality assurance of highly conformal and complex irradiation techniques.
• Development and optimization of linac and imaging specific quality assurance methods
• Investigation of dosimetric properties for point- and 2D detectors used in absolute and relative dosimetry.

In this context several IMRT verification phantoms have been licensed during the last years.

In cooperation with the staff unit “Radiation Protection and Dosimetry” the group is responsible for the legal approval process and reports based on the requirements of the German Radiation Protection Regulation and for the compliance with regulations of the German Radiation Protection Directive in medicine and the Medical Devices Law in radiation therapy.

• Clinical Cooperation Unit Radiation Oncology
• Dosimetrische Unsicherheiten und Applikationsfehler
  in der IMRT. Ein Versuch der Visualisierung während
  der Therapieplanung.
• Should we consider treatment machine uncertainties in radiotherapy planning?
• Dose effects by interfractional variability of tumor and
  OAR on the example of prostate-Ca-patients
• Automatic analyzation of patient specific QA measurements made with the Octavius 4D verification device
• Machine record parameters or Epid based data for
  dose recalculation in Adaptive Radio Therapy QA.
  A comparison of two scenarios.

• References