Dosimetry Enhancements for Oncology CR System

The dosimetry option for the 2000RT CR Plus System, developed by Eastman Kodak Co. (Rochester, NY, USA), allows clinicians to perform a wide range of beam and intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) quality assurance (QA) procedures, combined with the platform's existing ability to capture portal localization, verification, and simulation images required for radiation therapy patients. The 2000 system is an innovative all-in-one CR system for therapy, simulation, and dosimetry imaging.

Kodak's latest dosimetry software includes a new tool that allows physicists to check dose uniformity in a focused area of the QA image. This new capability will be available in the third quarter of 2006.

Colorado Associates in Medical Physics (Colorado Springs, CO, USA) was a test site for the dosimetry package. "Conducting QA testing with the Kodak 2000RT CR Plus system offers many advantages: The system produces a high-resolution image in seconds, and it eliminates the need for film processing and the artifacts that can occur. The digital image file is also much easier to store and it can be transmitted directly to our analysis software,” said Greg Gibbs, a medical physicist at the facility.

The system also features enhanced communications capabilities that have proven extremely well-liked with treatment facilities that need to integrate treatment images with existing information systems. The system's digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) RT Support allows facilities to interface QA, portal, verification, and simulation images with DICOM-compatible treatment planning, image management and quality assurance systems, along with PACS (picture archiving and communications systems) or digital archives.

In addition to showing its fully featured digital capture platform at the Orlando meeting, Kodak also demonstrated its Kodak CareStream Information Management Solutions that enable oncology treatment centers to store and manage patient information, treatment plans, and images captured by a variety of different systems, all from a central database. These systems also equip users to integrate oncology images with other clinical and non-clinical imaging and information systems to improve productivity and efficiency while reducing overall costs. Facilities can chose to store and archive information on-site or utilize a Kodak-hosted system.



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