MU-Tomo: Independent dose validation software for helical tomotherapy

A software program, MU-Tomo, has been developed to perform an independent point dose calculation and compare it to the dose calculated from the TomoTherapy (TomoTherapy, Inc., Madison, WI) treatment planning system (TPS). Input parameters required for this software include: archived tomotherapy patient files, QA plan image coordinates, tomotherapy-calculated point dose and machine-specifi c dosimetric parameters such as the off-axis ratios (OARx and OARy), tissue phantom ratios (TPR) and output functions (Scp). The software was validated on four phantom models and fifty tomotherapy patient plans representing various anatomical sites. Our results indicate that MU-Tomo can perform in a few seconds an independent dose calculation accurately and provide a secondary check for a point dose validation of helical tomotherapy plans.