Technical noteInvestigating output and energy variations and their relationship to delivery QA results using Statistical Process Control for helical tomotherapy

- Correlation between machine TQA output and patient treatment QA.
- Energy variation relationship between MVCT and ionisation chamber.
- Statistical Process Control analysis of treatment beam parameters.

The aims of this study were to investigate machine beam parameters using the TomoTherapy quality assurance (TQA) tool, establish a correlation to patient delivery quality assurance results and to evaluate the relationship between energy variations detected using different TQA modules. TQA daily measurement results from two treatment machines for periods of up to 4 years were acquired. Analyses of beam quality, helical and static output variations were made. Variations from planned dose were also analysed using Statistical Process Control (SPC) technique and their relationship to output trends were studied. Energy variations appeared to be one of the contributing factors to delivery output dose seen in the analysis. Ion chamber measurements were reliable indicators of energy and output variations and were linear with patient dose verifications.