Systems, devices, and methods for quality assurance of radiation therapy

1. A method for verifying quantities of interest of a radiation beam in an arc-based radiation therapy device including a gantry, comprising:

acquiring and converting 2D images in order to

generate radiation dose distribution images at predetermined radiation fields, each radiation field corresponding to a predetermined arc segment of the gantry;

comparing the generated radiation dose distribution images with corresponding predicted radiation dose distribution images using a three-dimensional (3D) gamma evaluation method, the comparing including:

calculating dose differences, spatial differences, and angular differences between points in the generated images and corresponding points in the predicted images; and

evaluating the calculated differences using a gamma error function, the gamma error function determining minimums of a metric comprising the calculated dose, spatial, and angular differences for the points evaluated in the generated image; and

determining acceptability of a quantity of interest based on a result of the evaluation.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising storing the generated radiation dose distribution images in a data structure where positional information of the points in the generated images are stored together with corresponding values of the points.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the storing includes storing the generated radiation dose distribution images as a first data set mapped as a first 3D data array including 3D positional information of the points in the generated images.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the 3D positional information includes spatial and angular locations of the delivered beams (X, Y, θ).

5. The method of claim 3 , further comprising storing the predicted radiation dose distribution images as a second data set mapped as a second 3D data array including 3D position information of the points in the predicted images.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the 3D positional information includes spatial and angular locations of the predicted beams (X, Y, θ).

7. The method of claim 5 , wherein the comparing includes comparing the first and second data sets using the 3D gamma evaluation method.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising computing a 3D gamma error matrix based on the following gamma error function:

γ( r p )=min{Γ( r m ,r p ,θ)}∀{ r m },

wherein the gamma value γ in the 3D matrix is a minimum value of a distance metric Γ indicating a measure of acceptability of a quantity of interest.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising calculating distance metric values for each point in the first data set using:

Γ(( x m ,y m ,θ m ),( x p ,y p ,θ p ))=√{square root over ( s xy (Δ x 2 +Δy 2 )+ s d (Δ D ) 2 +s θ Δθ 2 )}

wherein ΔD is the dosimetric difference between measured and predicted dose values, Δx=x m −x p and Δx=y m −y p are axial differences between corresponding points in the first and second data sets; and Δθ=θ m −θ p are angular differences between corresponding points in the first and second data sets.

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising reducing the 3D gamma error matrix to a 2D gamma error matrix.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein quantities of interest include radiation dose.

12. The method of claim 11 , further including determining dose delivery errors based on the comparison.

13. A system for verifying quantities of interest of a radiation beam in an arc-based radiation therapy device including a gantry, comprising:

a portal dose imaging device adapted to measure incident radiation dose from each predetermined radiation field, each radiation field corresponding to a predetermined arc segment of the gantry, the portal dose imaging device being further configured generate two-dimensional (2D) portal images for each arc segment; and

a processing device operably connected to the portal dose imaging device and being configured to convert the 2D portal images to 2D portal dose images and to store a plurality of measured 2D portal dose image data in a first 3D data array including 3D position information of points in the measured 2D portal dose images, and having spatial and angular locations of the delivered beams (X, Y, θ) as dimensions, the processing device being further configured to store a plurality of predicted 2D portal dose image data in a second 3D data array including 3D position information of points in the predicted 2D portal dose images, and having spatial and angular locations of the predicted beams (X, Y, θ) as dimensions;

the processing device being further configured to compare the points in the first 3D data array with corresponding points in the second 3D data array using a 3D gamma evaluation method, the gamma evaluation method including calculating dose differences, spatial differences, and angular differences between corresponding points in the first and second 3D data arrays as parameters;

the processing device being further configured to evaluate the calculated differences using a gamma error function, the gamma error function determining minimums of a metric comprising the calculated dose, spatial, and angular differences for the points evaluated in the generated image, and to determine acceptability of a quantity of interest based on a result of the evaluation,

wherein errors in the quantities of interest are determined based on the comparison.

14. The system of claim 13 , wherein the arc-field radiation therapy device is an intensity modulated radiation therapy device.

15. The system of claim 14 , wherein portal imaging device is an electronic portal imaging device (EPID).

16. The system of claim 15 , wherein the processing device is further configured to generate a 3D gamma error matrix based on the following gamma error function:

γ( r p )=min{Γ( r m ,r p ,θ)}∀{ r m },

wherein each gamma value γ in the 3D matrix is a minimum value of a distance metric Γ indicating a measure of acceptability of the quantity of interest.

17. The system of claim 13 , wherein the processing device is further configured to calculate distance metric values for each point in the first 3D data array using:

Γ(( x m ,y m ,θ m ),( x p ,y p ,θ p ))=√{square root over ( s xy (Δ x 2 +Δy 2 )+ s d (Δ D ) 2 +s θ Δθ 2 )}

wherein ΔD is the dosimetric difference between measured and predicted dose values, Δx=x m −x p and Δx=y m −y p are spatial differences between corresponding points in the first and second 3D data arrays; and Δθ=θ m −θ p are angular differences between corresponding points in the first and second 3D data arrays.

18. The system of claim 17 , wherein the processing device is further configured to reduce the 3D gamma error matrix to a 2D gamma error matrix.

19. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium upon which is embodied a sequence of programmed instructions for verifying quantities of interest of a radiation beam in a system including an arc-based radiation therapy device including a gantry and a computer processing system which executes the sequence of programmed instructions embodied on the computer-readable storage medium to cause the computer processing system to perform the steps of:

acquiring and converting 2D images in order to

generate radiation dose distribution images at predetermined radiation fields, each radiation field corresponding to a predetermined arc segment of the gantry; and

comparing the generated radiation dose distribution images with corresponding predicted radiation dose distribution images using a three- dimensional (3D) gamma evaluation method including calculating dose differences, spatial differences, and angular differences between points in the generated images and corresponding points in the predicted images as parameters,

wherein the comparing includes evaluating the calculated differences using a gamma error function, the gamma error function determining minimums of a metric comprising the calculated dose, spatial, and angular differences for the points evaluated in the generated image, and determining acceptability of a quantity of interest based on a result of the evaluation.

20. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 19 , further comprising storing the generated radiation dose distribution images in a data structure where positional information of the points in the generated images are stored together with corresponding values of the points.

21. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 20 , wherein the storing includes storing the generated radiation dose distribution images as a first data set mapped as a first 3D data array including 3D positional information of the points in the generated images.

22. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 21 , wherein the 3D positional information includes spatial and angular locations of the delivered beams (X, Y, θ).

23. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 21 , further comprising storing the predicted radiation dose distribution images as a second data set mapped as a second 3D data array including 3D position information of the points in the predicted images.

24. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 23 , wherein the 3D positional information includes spatial and angular locations of the predicted beams (X, Y, θ).

25. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 19 , wherein the comparing includes comparing the first and second data sets using the 3D gamma evaluation method.

26. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 25 , further comprising computing a 3D gamma error matrix based on the following gamma error function:

γ( r p )=min{Γ( r m ,r p ,θ)}∀{ r m }

wherein each gamma value γ in the 3D matrix is a minimum value of a distance metric Γ indicating a measure of acceptability of a quantity of interest.

27. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 26 , further comprising calculating distance metric values for each point in the first data set using:

Γ(( x m ,y m ,θ m ),( x p ,y p ,θ p ))=√{square root over ( s xy (Δ x 2 +Δy 2 )+ s d (Δ D ) 2 +s θ Δθ 2 )}

wherein ΔD is the dosimetric difference between measured and predicted dose values, Δx=x m −x p and Δx=y m −y p are axial differences between corresponding points in the first and second data sets; Δθ=θ m −θ p and are angular differences between corresponding points in the first and second data sets.

28. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27 , further comprising reducing the 3D gamma error matrix to a 2D gamma error matrix.

29. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 19 , wherein quantities of interest include radiation dose.

30. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 29 , further including determining dose delivery errors based on the comparison.

31. A method for verifying quantities of interest of a radiation beam in an arc-based radiation therapy device including a gantry, comprising:

delivering radiation at a plurality of radiation fields corresponding to a predetermined arc segment of the gantry;

measuring transmitted or absorbed radiation from each arc segment using an electronic portal dose imaging device;

generating 2D images based on the measured radiation;

converting the 2D images into corresponding 2D portal dose images (PDIs) using a portal dose reconstruction model; and

comparing the obtained 2D portal dose images with corresponding predicted radiation dose images using a three-dimensional (3D) gamma evaluation method including calculating dose differences, spatial differences, and angular differences between points in the generated images and corresponding points in the predicted images as parameters;

evaluating the calculated differences using a gamma error function, the gamma error function determining minimums of a metric comprising the calculated dose, spatial, and angular differences for the points evaluated in the generated image; and

determining acceptability of a quantity of interest based on a result of the evaluation.