A computational tool for the efficient analysis of dose-volume histograms from radiation therapy treatment plans

Abstract

A Histogram Analysis in Radiation Therapy (HART) program was developed to increase the efficiency and accuracy of dose–volume histogram (DVH) analysis for radiation therapy research. HART was written in MATLAB to analyze patient plans exported from the treatment planning system (Pinnacle³) in the American Association of Physicists in Medicine/Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (AAPM/RTOG) format. DVH data were converted from differential histograms to cumulative histograms and compared with those manually extracted from the planning system for five patients treated with the IMRT technique. HART calculated over 4000 parameters from the differential DVH curves for each patient in approximately 10–15 minutes. Manual extraction of this amount of data required 5 to 6 hours. The normalized root mean square deviation (NRMSD) for the HART–extracted DVH outcomes was less than 1% or within 0.5% distance-to-agreement (DTA). HART is supported with various user-friendly options and graphical features, and can be efficiently and precisely applied for the DVH analysis of large quantities of patient data. HART also performs higher order polynomial simulations for DVH curves, and can identify the optimal dose response models for critical organs. It also offers various plan specific outcome analysis features.