Quality Assurance System for Determination of Center Position in X-ray and Proton Irradiation Fields using a Stainless Ball and Imaging Plates in Proton Therapy at PMRC

In the proton therapy using a gantry system, periodical verification of iso-center position is very important to assure precision of patient positioning system at any gantry angles in proton treatment. In the gantry system, there are three different types of iso-center; 1) in a geometrical view, 2) in an X-ray beam's eye view, 3) in a proton beam's eye view. Idealistically, they would be an identical point. They could, however, be different points. It may be a source of errors in patient positioning. At PMRC, we have established a system of verification for iso-center positions using a stainless ball of 2-cm in diameter and an imaging plate. This system provides the relation among a center of a patient target position, a center of proton irradiation field, and/or a center of X-ray field in accuracy of 50$\square$m in the 2) and 3) views, as images of a center of the stainless ball and a center of a 100 mm${\times}$100 mm-aperture brass collimator recorded on the imaging plate, which is setup at 1-cm behind the ball. In addition, it provides simultaneously the images of the ball and the collimator on an imaging intensifier (II), which is setup downstream of the proton or X-ray beam. We present a method of quality assurance (QA) for calibration of iso-center position in a rotation gantry system at PMRC and the performance of this system. A proton beam position on the 1$\^$st/ scatterer in the nozzle of the gantry affects less sensitive (reduced by a factor of 1/5) to the results of the iso-center position. The effect is systematically correctable. The effect of the nozzle (or the collimator) position is less than 0.5 mm at the maximum extraction (390 mm).