title: Benchmarking beam alignment for a clinical helical tomotherapy device.
abstract: A clinical helical tomotherapy treatment machine has been installed at the University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center. Beam alignment has been finalized and accepted by UW staff. Helical tomotherapy will soon be clinically available to other sites. Clinical physicists who expect to work with this machine will need to be familiar with its unique dosimetric characteristics, and those related to the geometrical beam configuration and its verification are described here. A series of alignment tests and the results are presented. Helical tomotherapy utilizes an array of post-patient xenon-filled megavoltage radiation detectors. These detectors have proved capable of performing some alignment verification tests. That is particularly advantageous because those tests can then be automated and easily performed on an ongoing basis.
authors.affiliation: TomoTherapy Incorporated, Madison, Wisconsin 53717, USA.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Balog
authors.forename: T R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Mackie
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pearson
authors.forename: Susanta
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hui
authors.forename: Bhudatt
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Paliwal
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Jeraj
mesh_terms: D019985:Benchmarking / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D002138:Calibration / Q000592:standards; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005373:Film Dosimetry / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D011786:Quality Control; D011874:Radiometry / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D011879:Radiotherapy Dosage; D011881:Radiotherapy, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D020266:Radiotherapy, Conformal / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000592:standards*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D036542:Tomography, Spiral Computed / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards*