ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the commissioning and quality assurance (QA) procedures for a modern treatment planning system (TPS). Commissioning and QA of a TPS is one of the most important aspects of a QA program in a radiotherapy department. The treatment planning process starts with 3D imaging studies generally from computed tomography, but often supplemented with magnetic resonance, positron emission tomography, and/or other functional imaging studies. Many reports and papers on QA of TPSs have been published since their initial clinical utilization. To develop a TPS QA program, the potential sources of errors when using the TPS system need to be identified, and a failure mode and effects analysis is recommended. Dosimetric accuracy of a TPS strongly depends on the beam data input quality and dose calculation algorithms. Each dose calculation algorithm requires unique data to model a treatment beam, but the principle of beam modelling is universal where the goal is to represent the actual treatment beam in the TPS.
