Automatic Extraction and Analysis of Dosimetry Data in Radiotherapy Plans

Objective To improve the efficiency and accuracy of extraction and analysis of dosimetry data in radiotherapy plans for a batch of patients. Methods With the interface function provided in Matlab platform, a program was written to extract the dosimetry data exported from treatment planning system in DICOM RT format and exported the dosevolume data to an Excel file with the SPSS compatible format. This method was compared with manual operation for 14 gastric carcinoma patients to validate the efficiency and accuracy. Results The output Excel data were compatible with SPSS in format, the dosimetry data error for PTV dose interval of 90%~98%, PTV dose interval of 99%~106% and all OARs were -3.48E-5±3.01E-5, -1.11E-3±7.68E-4, -7.85E-5±9.91E-5 respectively. Compared with manual operation, the time required was reduced from 5.3 h to 0.19 h and input error was reduced from 0.002 to 0. Conclusion The automatic extraction of dosimetry data in DICOM RT format for batch patients, the SPSS compatible data exportation, quick analysis were achieved in this paper. The efficiency of clinical researches based on dosimetry data analysis of large number of patients will be improved with this method.