ProSoma Core

Overview

ProSoma Core is a software package for the verification of patient treatments in radiotherapy. It is designed to simplify your work and enhance confidence in your treatment planning procedure. It also enables you to determine what a LINAC does and what the consequences are for the patient if the machine does not perform as expected.

Today’s radiation techniques like IMRT, VMAT and SBRT are getting more and more complex. At the same time, tolerances are getting smaller and smaller. Both trends lead to increased quality assurance efforts occupying machine and human resources. Classical verification techniques by measuring doses in phantoms are state-of-the-art, but they cannot determine inaccuracies in the human body. Furthermore, these techniques are time-consuming while an extensive machine QA has to be performed anyhow required and stipulated by law and authorities.

ProSoma Core provides an alternative for your daily routine to solve this inherent conflict. The idea behind the product is not just a check of monitor units, it is a comprehensive verification of plans calculated by treatment planning systems.

ProSoma Core is fully compatible with all c-arm Linacs as well as Halcyon/Ethos Machines.

Plan recalculation

After automatic import of all patient-related DICOM objects a newly designed Monte Carlo algorithm calculates dose distributions on standard CPU hardware within minutes with an overall uncertainty of less than 1%. Based on a set of customisable objectives including gamma and dose deviations, DVH based metrics, cross section images and others an immediate answer is given whether a plan is acceptable or weak. Furthermore, ProSoma Core verifies the robustness of treatment plans by applying the typical patient position variations and calculating their impact on the dose distribution. An interactive mode allows the detailed investigation of critical regions.

Machine logfile evaluation

In addition to the verification of treatment plans, ProSoma Core processes the machine logfiles provided by the LINAC which indicate actual leaf positions, collimator and gantry angles as well as dose rates. The software compares the fluence calculated from the treatment plan to the one derived from the logfiles. In case considerable deviations are detected, a full 3D dose calculation is performed to examine their implications for the DVH. Furthermore, all logfile data are internally recorded to enable you to generate an overall summary report after finalizing the treatment which calculates the truly delivered dose over all fractions and additionally contains evaluations of leaf pair and gantry angle deviations.

Adaptive RT analysis

ProSoma Core’s Adaptive RT analysis covers another major source of inaccuracies in radiotherapy: anatomical changes in the course of the treatment. For that purpose the CBCT usually acquired before treatment is deformably registered to the planning CT to transfer all structures to the new anatomy. Additionally, the correction matrix applied on the patient couch before treatment is taken into account to be able to correctly recalculate the 3D dose on the deformed anatomy. Finally, the planned DVH including user-defined metrics is compared to the current DVH. Together with a side-by-side view of the two dose distributions this enables you to decide whether replanning is required or not.

Web interface

ProSoma Core comes with a web interface to enable you to conveniently access all evaluation results from any computer within your clinic network. The web interface presents all reports created by ProSoma Core, filtered with respect to creation date or report type, and whether they have passed or failed. Moreover, it offers an option to approve reports, which is directly recorded in the respective PDF document. You can also configure the software to e-mail all verification results to a number of responsible persons for validation or to send them as embedded objects to your PACS.