Elekta physicist earns top VMAT score in 2020 TROG SBRT plan study

Elekta China physicist Jiaqi Dai, PhD, uses Monaco to plan award-winning liver SBRT case

In the 2020 TROG SBRT Liver Plan Study sponsored by ProKnow, Elekta China’s Dr. Jiaqi Dai achieved a score of 148.66 out of 150, earning him Special Recognition for Top VMAT Score among 137 submissions for the liver SBRT plan from participants from around the world. The results were announced on March 17. The challenge was to develop an SBRT plan for a liver case that had two PTVs situated very close to organs-at-risk. The plan prescription specified was the delivery of 40 Gy in five fractions, based on liver ablative radiotherapy using kV intrafraction monitoring.

Dr. Dai attributes his success to the variety of useful tools in Monaco® treatment planning system. These tools enabled him to achieve the desired dose distribution in the very complex liver plan.

“For any plan, we can choose ‘pareto’ mode to ensure the tumor receives the prescription dose, or ‘constrained’ mode to better protect organs-at-risk,” he says. “In addition, we can use manual-weight when a plan cannot meet the requirement via auto-weight optimization. And we use multi-criterial optimization to achieve lower doses to organs-at-risk. The Monte Carlo dose calculation algorithm provides the necessary dose accuracy and ensures a high pass rate for quality assurance, which means the plan is always clinically deliverable.”

Elekta Australia’s Ray Dalfen received not only the highest score in Monaco Proton planning, but in the contemporaneous 2020 TROG Contouring Workshop, he also earned Special Recognition for his contouring performance on the left kidney. In addition, Elekta Italy’s Roberto Pellegrini and Elekta USA’s Megan Tattersall were High Performers for their Monaco Proton and Monaco VMAT plans, respectively.