AAPM Medical Physics Practice Guideline 5.a.: Commissioning and QA of Treatment Planning Dose Calculations — Megavoltage Photon and Electron Beams-5A84F123

The treatment planning system (TPS) is an essential component of external beam radiation therapy. TPSs are used to plan the beam arrangements, energies, field sizes, fluence patterns, and modifiers that provide optimum dose distributions to treat disease and minimize dose to the healthy tissues. The accuracy of the dose calculations is paramount for safe and efficacious treatment delivery. A substantial (but not exclusive) part of commissioning a TPS is ensuring that the radiation beam parameters, and other data affecting the accuracy of the dose calculation, are adequately modeled in the system and are properly validated. These tasks are the subject of this Medical Physics Practice Guideline (MPPG).