Once the first three baseline measurements are passed criteria and Preliminary scan is not started (If started the preliminary scan results need to be passed or accepted), the Measurement page can be opened by clicking the Measurement tab.
In the Measurement page, the wizard guides through the measurement procedure (see Guided Measurement Procedure below) and displays the measurement status online during measurements (see In-Scan Parameters and Validationsbelow).
The wizard triggers the measurements and displays an overlay with instructions whenever user interaction is required, similar to those in the Baseline Measurements page. During measurements, some baseline measurements will be triggered if necessary (see Baseline Measurement Triggers below). The measurements can be interrupted anytime and restarted again.
Baseline Measurement Triggers
Based on the measurement group settings, some baseline measurements done in the Baseline Measurements page may not suitable due to the change of settings such as energy, field size, detector, etc. and thus need to be re-done. The SMARTSCAN wizard will trigger the necessary baseline measurements. The table below lists the conditions when these measurements are triggered.
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Measurement |
Triggered whenever a change made in one of these parameters |
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|---|---|---|
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Photons |
Electrons |
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|
Background |
|
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Normalization |
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|
|
Dose rate |
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|
CAX |
|
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Guided Measurement Procedure
Estimated / Elapsed / Estimated Remaining Time
The estimated complete measurement time is displayed on the top of the group view (1). Elapsed time and estimated remaining time are displayed under Status (2).
Baseline Measurements
During measurements, some of the baseline measurements will be triggered if certain measurement settings are changed (see Baseline Measurement Triggers). The corresponding overlays will appear to give user instructions. The wizard will automatically switch to the Baseline Measurements page and perform the measurement; when finish, switch back to in the Measurement page.
The beam on/off threshold is adjusted according to the field size set in the LINAC. Therefore, if the field size set in the LINAC is not the one required in the overlay, the beam on/off detection will not function correctly.
In this case, it is required to re-start the entire baseline measurements by clicking the Start baseline measurements button in the Baseline Measurements page.
Workflow Interrupted
The measurements can be stopped anytime (by clicking the Stop button) and restarted again.
In a measurement session, if three consecutive scans are suspicious/out of tolerance, the workflow will be halted and an overlay appears:
The measurement can be continued if desired. The workflow can be re-started manually.
However, after two suspicious/out of tolerance scans, if the user stops measurement and then continue later, the number of measurements required to halt the workflow will be reset. Therefore, it could be more than three consecutive suspicious/out of tolerance scans measured but the user is not warned by the overlay, Workflow Halted, if there is a break in between.
Re-Measure in Context Menu
The measured group or measured queue item can be re-measured with the corresponding context menu commands in two occasions:
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Re-Measure Keep |
Re-measures a queue item or a measurement group while keeping the already measured scans |
|---|---|
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Re-Measure Delete |
Re-measures a queue item or a measurement group and deletes the already measured scans of this group |
Currently running queue item and its group are marked with in the Group view (1). Its parameters and in-scan validation are shown under Current scan (3).
Measurement progress can be seen graphically alive (4). The in-scan analysis shows the real time status of the scan. It checks the noise and field widths, e.g.:
Post-Scan Validations
The post-scan validations are available for the finished queue items and groups.
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Once a Measurement is performed, the status of the scan is shown based on the given tolerance. An overview of the scan analysis can be seen directly from measured queue item itself. For a measurement-finished group. The analysis results are shown on the left of the queue item:
and
: Success - all measured scans are within tolerances.
and
: Suspicious - at least one measured scan is failed due to the noise out of tolerance, measured with invalid dose rate, or user-abort.
and
: Failed - at least one measured scan is out of tolerance.
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Tooltip: by placing the mouse cursor on a status icon (e.g.,
A post-scan validation status tooltip for the analysis information