Innovating and Evolving Quality Assurance

Independent Quality Assurance, as an important foundation for reliability, trust and accuracy in QA, has been assumed as a "given" in the Radiation Therapy community. However, with RT systems increasingly offering more closed solutions with built-in "self-check" QA, the topic of independent QA becomes of high importance.

To raise awareness, IBA Dosimetry, together with the leading vendors of QA equipment for Radiation Therapy worldwide, launched an “Independent Quality Assurance” initiative. As a result, we agreed on the following components that are essential to ensure independent Quality Assurance:​ ​

1. Solutions that are independent and without bias of RT system manufacturers​
2. Open & free access to data sources​
3. Comparison of results for different RT systems and manufacturers​
4. Connectivity of RT systems via documented interfaces and common formats like DICOM​
5. QA to rely on physical characteristics such as beam, light, couch position, etc.​

Today, most QA applications for validating the treatment machine and for verifying the patient specific plan and treatment are separated with little or no connectivity.  The smart combination of results and data from both patient QA and machine QA will unlock the potential of a real risk-based QA in Radiation Therapy. For an all-embracing QA solution both strings need to converge, allowing better outcomes and faster results.

At IBA Dosimetry, we are innovating Quality Assurance based on four pillars that enable solutions to help save valuable time of the Medical Physicist, and that provide higher accuracy, more confidence, and peace of mind.

The implementation of measurements, integration features, smart automation, and prediction of QA results is the center of our innovation strategy. Measurements will remain important for the future of QA. However, further integration, Monte Carlo-based predictive QA, and automation will enable users to measure only where it really matters, leading to fewer measurements in the future with better quality results.