General Activities

 

 

The IROC Houston QA Center was established as a resource in radiation dosimetry and physics for cooperative clinical trial groups and all radiotherapy facilities that deliver radiation treatments to patients entered onto cooperative group protocols. The primary responsibility is to assure NCI and the cooperative groups that the participating institutions have adequate quality assurance procedures and no major systematic dosimetry discrepancies, so that they can be expected to deliver radiation treatments that are clinically comparable to those delivered by other institutions in the cooperative groups. To accomplish this, the IROC Houston monitors the basic machine output and brachytherapy source strengths, the dosimetry data utilized by the institutions, the calculation algorithms used for treatment planning, and the institutions’ quality control procedures. The methods of monitoring include on-site dosimetry review by an IROC Houston physicist, and a variety of remote audit tools. During the on-site evaluation, the institution’s physicists and radiation oncologists are interviewed, physical measurements are made on the therapy machines, dosimetry and quality assurance data are reviewed, and patient dose calculations are evaluated.

 

FAQ about the IROC Houston QA Program