Program Information
Evaluation of the Beam Performance of a Varian TrueBeam Linear Accelerator Under External Device-Based Gated Delivery Conditions
K Kobulnicky*, D Pawlak , A Purwar , Varian Medical Systems, Inc., Palo Alto, CA
Presentations
SU-E-T-403 (Sunday, July 12, 2015) 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM Room: Exhibit Hall
Purpose:To examine the beam performance of a Varian TrueBeam linear accelerator under external device-based gated delivery conditions.
Methods:Six gating cycles were used to evaluate the gating performance of a standard production TrueBeam system that was not specially tuned in any way. The system was equipped with a factory installed external gating interface (EXGI). An in-house EXGI tester box was used to simulate the input gating signals. The gating cycles were selected based on long beam-on and short beam-off times, short beam-on and long beam-off times, or equal beam on and off times to check linac performance. The beam latencies were measured as the time difference between the logic high gating signal and the first or last target pulses with an oscilloscope. Tissue-Phantom Ratio, beam flatness, and dose distributions from 5 different plans were measured using the 6 different gating durations and the un-gated irradiation. A PTW 729 2-D array was used to compare 5 plans versus the un-gated delivery with a 1%/1mm gamma index passing criteria.
Results:The beam latencies of the linac were based off of 20 samples for beam-on and beam-off, for each gating cycle. The average beam-on delays were measured to be between 57 and 66msec, with a maximum of 88 msec. The beam off latencies averaged between 19 and 26msec, with a maximum of 48 msec. TPR20,10 measurements showed beam energy stability within 0.5% of the un-gated delivery. Beam flatness was better than 2.5% for all gated cycles. All but two deliveries, the open field with 4 seconds on, 1 second off, and a five field IMRT plan with 0.5 seconds on, 2.5 seconds off, had >90% passing rate.
Conclusion:TrueBeam demonstrates excellent beam stability with minimal beam latencies under external device-based gated operations. Dosimetric measurements show minimal variation in beam energy, flatness, and plan delivery.
Funding Support, Disclosures, and Conflict of Interest: Authors are employees of Varian Medical Systems, Inc.
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