Automated customized retrieval of radiotherapy data for clinical trials, audit and research

• Published in: British journal of radiology 2018-01, Vol.91 (1083), p.20170651-20170651
• Main Authors: Romanchikova, Marina, Harrison, Karl, Burnet, Neil G, Hoole, Andrew Cf, Sutcliffe, Michael Pf, Parker, Michael Andrew, Jena, Rajesh, Thomas, Simon James
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Automation; Clinical Trials as Topic; Computerized data collection; Equipment/linear accelerators; Humans; Information Storage and Retrieval - methods; Management Audit; Physics & Technology; Radiology Information Systems - organization & administration; Radiotherapy; Radiotherapy imaging/simulation; Short Communication; Software; Treatment planning/dose computation
• ISSN: 0007-1285; 1748-880X
• DOI: 10.1259/bjr.20170651

To enable fast and customizable automated collection of radiotherapy (RT) data from tomotherapy storage. Human-readable data maps (TagMaps) were created to generate DICOM-RT (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine standard for Radiation Therapy) data from tomotherapy archives, and provided access to "hidden" information comprising delivery sinograms, positional corrections and adaptive-RT doses. 797 data sets totalling 25,000 scans were batch-exported in 31.5 h. All archived information was restored, including the data not available via commercial software. The exported data were DICOM-compliant and compatible with major commercial tools including RayStation, Pinnacle and ProSoma. The export ran without operator interventions. The TagMap method for DICOM-RT data modelling produced software that was many times faster than the vendor's solution, required minimal operator input and delivered high volumes of vendor-identical DICOM data. The approach is applicable to many clinical and research data processing scenarios and can be adapted to recover DICOM-RT data from other proprietary storage types such as Elekta, Pinnacle or ProSoma. Advances in knowledge: A novel method to translate data from proprietary storage to DICOM-RT is presented. It provides access to the data hidden in electronic archives, offers a working solution to the issues of data migration and vendor lock-in and paves the way for large-scale imaging and radiomics studies.