# Correcting Dose Calculation Errors in Radiation Oncology

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF TX MD ANDERSON CAN CTR · 2020 · $149,600

## Abstract

Identifying and resolving dose errors in radiation oncology
Radiation therapy is the standard of care for the treatment of many cancers. To avoid unnecessary
recurrences or toxicity, the correct dose must be delivered to the tumor within ±5% of what is
prescribed. The radiation dose to the patient is determined with a treatment planning computer
calculation, the accuracy of which depends strongly on the input parameters used by the
individual clinic to describe their radiation fields. Audits of centers participating in national
radiation therapy clinical trials have found that that 18% of audited cases in the United States do
not deliver the radiation dose within ±7% of the intended dose. One possible cause for these
errors is the inaccurate characterization of the radiation field in the institution’s computational
model. This project will develop tools that can identify when this important cause of dose errors
is relevant, identify which parameters are most important for the accurate calculation of radiation
dose, and then directly interact with those hospitals with identified problems to resolve those
errors. This advances our long term goal of improving survival and decreasing normal tissue
toxicity in radiation oncology by ensuring accurate dose delivery. Our hypothesis is that a linear
accelerator model-specific computational system can identify and resolve 50% of treatment errors
in radiation oncology (those showing >5% error), which would be a substantial step towards
improved quality. Specific Aim 1 will develop the infrastructure to identify computational errors in
radiation therapy dose calculations using reference radiation beam characteristics. It will then test
the performance of hundreds of institutions in calculating radiotherapy doses. Specific Aim 2 will
determine which basic radiotherapy parameters are most important for accurate dose calculation
under clinical conditions. Specific Aim 3 will develop infrastructure to interact with institutions
where computational errors have been identified. We will work with the institution to improve their
dose calculation models, and verify that their new models are more accurate at calculating dose.
Because the calculation model is used to determine the dose to all patients, this improvement will
benefit all patients treated at that institution.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9923448
- **Project number:** 5R01CA214526-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF TX MD ANDERSON CAN CTR
- **Principal Investigator:** Stephen F Kry
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $149,600
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-05-01 → 2021-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9923448

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9923448, Correcting Dose Calculation Errors in Radiation Oncology (5R01CA214526-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9923448. Licensed CC0.

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