Long‐term evaluation and cross‐checking of two geometric calibrations of kV and MV imaging systems for Linacs

Geometric or mechanical accuracy of kV and MV imaging systems of two Varian TrueBeam linacs have been monitored by two geomertirc calibration systems, Varian IsoCal geometric calibration system and home‐developed gQA system. Results of both systems are cross‐checked and the long‐term geometric stabilities of linacs are evaluated. Two geometric calibration methodologies have been used to assess kV and MV imaging systems and their coincidence periodically on two TrueBeam linacs for about one year. Both systems analyze kV or MV projection images of special designed phantoms to retrieve geometric parameters of the imaging systems. The isocenters — laser isocenter and centers of rotations of kV imager and EPID — are then calculated, based on results of multiple projections from different angles. Long‐term calibration results from both systems are compared for cross‐checking. There are 24 sessions of side‐by‐side calibrations performed by both systems on two TrueBeam linacs. All the disagreements of isocenters between two calibrations systems are less than 1 mm with ± 0.1 mm SD. Most of the large disagreements occurred in vertical direction (AP direction), with an averaged disagreement of 0.45 mm. The average disagreements of isocenters are 0.09 mm in other directions. Additional to long‐term calibration monitoring, for the accuracy test, special tests were performed by misaligning QA phantoms on purpose (5 mm away from setup isocenter in AP, SI, and lateral directions) to test the liability performance of both systems with the known deviations. The errors are within 0.5 mm. Both geometric calibration systems, IsoCal and gQA, are capable of detecting geometric deviations of kV and MV imaging systems of linacs. The long‐term evaluation also shows that the deviations of geometric parameters and the geometric accuracies of both linacs are small and very consistent during the one‐year study period. PACS number: 87.56.Fc