Radformation Planning Automation Software Generates Substantial Time Savings, Efficiency, and Plan Quality in Wayne State University and Thomas Jefferson University Studies

New York, November 14, 2018

Radformation, a software company co-founded by medical physicists who are passionate about bringing automation to cancer treatments, received favourable results in two recent university studies. The company’s ClearCheck software saved significant time in the planning phases of radiation treatment on a number of treatment cases, while simultaneously increasing overall quality of plans.

Thomas Henry Charpentier and his team at Thomas Jefferson University reported that “With a standard DVH analysis, step 2 [Manual Evaluation of DVH] can be cumbersome and time-consuming for plans with many structures, as well as not allowing simultaneous analysis of dosimetry metrics.” He went onto conclude that “The time taken to evaluate various dose constraints (physician and/or protocol based) for 17 plans (10 H&N, 5 prostate, and 2 SBRT lung with 25-29, 11, and 14-15 constraints, respectively) was measured as an indication of plan evaluation without ClearCheck. Subsequently, ClearCheck templates with the same constraints were created for each treatment site and populated instantly by running the script.” This study was presented at the 60th Annual Meeting of AAPM.

The Karmanos Cancer Institute at Wayne State University drew similar conclusions to those arrived at by the Thomas Jefferson University team. They found that not only did ClearCheck software account for errors that if missed by clinicians would have a “substantial impact on plan quality,” they went on to say that ClearCheck’s “ability to evaluate all planning goals simultaneously during plan creation results in more efficient plan optimization and realization of planning goals.” Jay Burmeister and his colleagues at Karmanos also found that they saved “an average of 4.3 minutes per plan optimization.” These results were presented at the 2018 ASTRO Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.