A software toes for the quantitative evaluation of 3D dose calculation algorithms

Current methods for evaluating modern radiation therapy treatment planning (RTP) systems include the manual superposition of calculated and measured isodose curves and the comparison of a limited number of calculated and measured point doses. Both techniques have significant limitations in providing quantitative evaluations of the large number of dose data generated by modern RTP systems. More sophisticated comparison techniques have been presented in the literature, including dose-difference and distance-to-agreement (DTA) analyses. A software tool has been developed that uses superimposed isodose plots, dose-difference, and DTA distributions to quantify errors in computed dose distributions. Dose-difference and DTA analyses are overly sensitive in regions of high- and low-dose gradient, respectively. The logical union of locations that fail both dose-difference and DTA acceptance criteria, termed the composite evaluation, is calculated and displayed. The composite evaluation provides a method for the physicist to efficiently identify regions that fail both the dose-difference and DTA acceptance criteria. The tool provides a computer platform for the quantitative comparison of calculated and measured dose distributions. (C) 1998 American Association of Physicists in Medicine. [S0094-2405(98)00410-6].