Assessment and management of radiotherapy beam intersections with the treatment couch

The impact of the treatment couch on a radiotherapy plan is rarely fully assessed during the treatment planning process. Incorporating a couch model into the treatment planning system (TPS) enables the planner to avoid or dosimetrically evaluate beam‐couch intersections. In this work, we demonstrate how existing TPS tools can be used to establish this capability and assess the accuracy and effectiveness of the system through dose measurements and planning studies. Such capabilities may be particularly relevant for the planning of arc therapies. Treatment couch top models were introduced into a TPS by fusing their CT image sets with the patient CT dataset. Regions of interest characterizing couch elements were then imported and assigned appropriate densities in the TPS. Measurements in phantom agreed with TPS calculations to within 2% dose and 1° gantry rotation. To clinically validate the model, a retrospective study was performed on patient plans that posed difficulties in beam‐couch intersection during setup. Beam‐couch intersection caused up to a 3% reduction in PTV coverage, defined by the 95% of the prescribed dose, and up to a 1% reduction in mean CTV coverage. Dose compensation strategies for IMRT treatments with beams passing through couch elements were investigated using a four‐field IMRT plan with three beams passing through couch elements. In this study, ignoring couch effects resulted in point dose reductions of [Formula: see text]. A methodology for incorporating detailed couch characteristics into a TPS has been established and explored. The method can be used to predict beam‐couch intersections during planning, potentially eliminating the need for pretreatment appointments. Alternatively, if a beam‐couch intersection problem arises, the impact of the couch can be assessed on a case‐by‐case basis and a clinical decision made based on full dosimetric information. PACS numbers: 87.53.Bn;87.55.Gh;87.55.de;87.56.nk