Open AccessFactual survey of the clinical use of deformable image registration software for radiotherapy in Japan
Author(s) -
Noriyuki Kadoya,
Satoshi Kito,
Masahiko Kurooka,
Masahide Saito,
Akihiro Takemura,
Naoki Tohyama,
Masahide Tominaga,
Yoshiyuki Nakajima,
Yukio Fujita,
Yuki Miyabe
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of radiation research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.643
H-Index - 60
eISSN - 1349-9157
pISSN - 0449-3060
DOI - 10.1093/jrr/rrz034
Subject(s) - project commissioning , medical physics , quality assurance , radiation therapy , medicine , radiation oncology , software , medical physicist , publishing , radiology , computer science , pathology , political science , external quality assessment , law , programming language
Deformable image registration (DIR) has recently become commercially available in the field of radiotherapy. However, there was no detailed information regarding the use of DIR software at each medical institution. Thus, in this study, we surveyed the status of the clinical use of DIR software for radiotherapy in Japan. The Japan Society of Medical Physics and the Japanese Society for Radiation Oncology mailing lists were used to announce this survey. The questionnaire was created by investigators working under the research grant of the Japanese Society for Radiation Oncology (2017-2018) and intended for the collection of information regarding the use of DIR in radiotherapy. The survey was completed by 161 institutions in Japan. The survey results showed that dose accumulation was the most frequent purpose for which DIR was used in clinical practice (73%). Various commissioning methods were performed, although they were not standardized. Qualitative evaluation with actual patient images was the most commonly used method (28%), although 30% of the total number of responses (42% of institutions) reported that they do not perform commissioning. We surveyed the current status of clinical use of DIR software for radiotherapy in Japan for the first time. Our results indicated that a certain number of institutions used DIR software for clinical practice, and various commissioning methods were performed, although they were not standardized. Taken together, these findings highlight the need for a technically unified approach for commissioning and quality assurance for the use of DIR software in Japan.