IHERO UseCase Curves and BACs

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1. Proposed Workitem: Curves and Beam Aperture Contours for DRR's, kV, fluoro

  • Proposal Editor: David Waid, Martha Jefferson Hospital, david.waid@mjh.org
  • Editor: David Waid (Colin Field put on wiki)
  • Date: N/A (Wiki keeps history)
  • Version: N/A (Wiki keeps history)
  • Domain: Radiation Oncology


2. The Problem

Varian OBI linacs have the ability to use curves and beam aperture contours for kV and fluoro imaging. Curves and beam aperture contours can be very useful for setting up patients, especially when trying to verify respiratory gated patients. There are some severe, and frankly, unacceptable limitations to what Pinnacle and Impac can do with curves and beam aperture contours (BAC's).


3. Key Use Case

Pinnacle limitations: To my knowledge, Pinnacle can not be used to directly create curves or beam aperture contours. It is often preferable to generate curves or BAC's using the planning system rather than manually drawing them on a DRR in the R & V system. There are several painful workarounds such as i.)leaving the desired curve or BAC burned into the DRR from Pinnacle and then tracing it by hand in Impac using the mouse or ii.) having to purchase a standalone Eclipse system with RTChart in order to more properly create computer-generated curves or BAC's.

Impac limitations: When drawing directly on the DRR, Impac limits each DRR to 16 curves and 1 beam aperture contour. Only the beam aperture contours will show up on a Varian OBI machine during fluoroscopy. Additionally, the drawing tools are primitive and do not allow for satisfactory editing.


This issue along with a workaround was presented as a poster at the 2008 3rd Annual SRS/SBRT conference put on by the Cleveland Clinic.

4. Standards & Systems

<List existing systems that are/could be involved in the problem/solution.>

<If known, list standards which might be relevant to the solution>


5. Discussion

<Include additional discussion or consider a few details which might be useful for the detailed proposal>

<Why IHE would be a good venue to solve the problem and what you think IHE should do to solve it.>
<What might the IHE technical approach be? Existing Actors? New Transactions? Additional Profiles?>
<What are some of the risks or open issues to be addressed?>


<This is the brief proposal. Try to keep it to 1 or at most 2 pages>

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