Benchmarking MapRT and first clinical experience: A novel solution for collision‐free non‐coplanar treatment planning

In recent years, complex re-irradiations and stereotactic treatments have triggered the use of non-coplanar treatments for better dose conformality, entailing risks of collision between the machine and the patient, couch, or immobilization device. To ensure the plans deliverability without collisions, time-consuming actions are typically performed, including dry runs, in-room couch rotations, and beam configuration tests during planning. To overcome these challenges, a new tool called MapRT (VisionRT Ltd., London, UK) was developed. MapRT predicts a clearance map based on a patients' 3D model (acquired with dedicated cameras at the CT simulation) and pre-established machine models. This work evaluates the accuracy of MapRT using a 30 × 35 × 40 cm³ phantom and 64 gantry/couch collision coordinates on a Truebeam Linac (Varian, Palo Alto, USA). Collision coordinates were recorded for gantry and couch rotations. The agreement of real collision coordinates and MapRT's predictions was evaluated for different buffer margins around the couch/patient models customizable in MapRT. Results of the first clinical implementation of MapRT were also reported. With no buffer margin, MapRT's predictions and experimental collision coordinates showed small average differences but with large standard deviations for gantry (-0.5°±6.2°) and couch (-0.1°±4.8°) collision coordinates. When excluding the kV imaging components, these values were of -0.8°±3.5° for gantry and 0.4°±4.4° for couch. Finally, a 3 cm buffer margin allows for 100% accurate predictions by MapRT of gantry-to-phantom and gantry-to-couch collisions. Among the ∼900 treatment plans checked with MapRT, 22 collisions could be avoided while another 6 plans still incurred a collision but these are mainly due to users' oversights. MapRT easily predict collisions in complex treatment planning. This work demonstrated its reliability using a 3 cm buffer margin. MapRT is a promising tool for increasing security, time saving and workflow improvement.