Technical Note: A standardized automation framework for monitoring institutional radiotherapy protocol compliance.

Abstract

PURPOSE\nTo establish a framework for the standardization of monitoring radiotherapy protocol compliance.\n\n\nMETHODS\nAn automated protocol compliance tool was developed using best practice in software design and a flexible framework to easily adapt to changing institutional standards. The Eclipse scripting environment was used to develop the application with the scripting application programing interface (API) and direct data extraction from ARIA. For each institutional protocol, external validation was specified in a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file that stores protocol specific constraints and evaluates compliance of the data from Eclipse and Aria. This tool was applied prospectively to a cohort of prostate cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy with a prescription regimen of 60 Gy in 20 fractions.\n\n\nRESULTS\nThe prospective evaluation was performed on 58 prostate cancer patients. For this cohort, the mean (standard deviation) pass rate is 92.3% (6.1%). The overall fail rate is 6.0% (5.8%); the percentage of these failures is in 2.6% in Patient Assessment, 0% in Simulation, and 97.4% in Treatment Planning.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nA protocol compliance application is developed and implemented in a standard radiotherapy information system. The application functionality is demonstrated on a cohort of 58 patients undergoing prostate radiotherapy, which highlights the utility of assessing adherence to institutional protocols. A unified method must be available for the community to ensure consistency in compliance reporting.