ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: To develop an efficient and economic daily quality research tool (DQRT) for daily check of multiplatform linear accelerators (LINACs) with flattening filter (FF) and flattening filter-free (FFF) photon beams by using an Electronic Portal Image Device (EPID). MATERIALS AND METHODS: After EPID calibration, the monitored parameters were analyzed from a 10 cm × 10 cm open and 60° wedge portal images measured by the EPID with 100 MU exposure. Next, the repeatability of the EPID position accuracy, long-term stability, and linearity between image gray value and exposure were verified. Output and beam quality stability of the 6-MV FF and FFF beams measured by DQRT with the introduced setup errors of EPID were also surveyed. Besides, some test results obtained by DQRT were compared with those measured by FC65-G and Matrixx. At last, the tool was evaluated on three LINACs (Synergy, VersaHD, TrueBeam) for 2 months with two popular commercial QA tools as references. RESULTS: There are no differences between repeatability tests for all monitored parameters. Image grayscale values obtained by EPID and exposure show good linearity. Either 6 MV FF or FFF photon beam shows minimal impact to the results. The differences between FC65-G, Matrixx and DQRT results are negligible. Monitor results of the two commercial tools are consistent with the DQRT results collected during the 2-month period. CONCLUSION: With a shorter time and procedure, the DQRT is useful to daily QA works of LINACs, producing a QA result quality similarly to or more better than the traditional tools and giving richer contents to the QA results. For hospitals with limited QA time window available or lack of funding to purchase commercial QA tools, the proposed DQRT can provide an alternative and economic approach to accomplish the task of daily QA for LINACs.