2007 Quality Assurance of Radiation Therapy and the Challenges of Advanced Technologies

February 20-22, 2007
Omni Mandalay Hotel at Las Colinas
Dallas, Texas

Established advanced radiation-therapy techniques such as 3D conformal radiation therapy (3D-CRT), intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), image-guided brachytherapy, inverse treatment planning, and stereotactic radiosurgery/radiotherapy, all exhibit a high degree of complexity and large clinic- and hardware-dependent variations in clinical implementation. In addition, emerging high-technology procedures, such as image guided external beam therapy, adaptive radiation therapy, motion adaptive radiation therapy and intraoperative brachytherapy planning, exhibit high levels of automation and near real-time execution of sophisticated image–processing operations such as autocontouring, image registration and plan optimization that render traditional manual verification procedures impractical. The conventional quality assurance paradigm, as illustrated by TG-40, consists of developing a consensus menu of tests and device performance specifications from a generic process model that is assumed to apply to all clinical applications of the device.  The complexity, variation in practice patterns and level of automation of high-technology radiotherapy renders this “one size fits all” prescriptive QA paradigm ineffective or cost-prohibitive variations if the high-probability error pathways of all possible clinical applications of the device are to be covered.

This comprehensive three-day program of invited talks will address the broad range of quality assurance concepts and procedures used in modern day radiation therapy, including both established and emerging image-based and adaptive radiation therapy modalities. The objectives of this program are to assess and critique the currently available QA guidance and methods of formulating QA protocols as well as to explore risk-informed industrial engineering approaches to radiation therapy error mitigation. 

Questions
If you have questions, please contact us at meetings@astro.org or 703-502-1550.