ESTRO 2023 - Abstract Book

S10

Saturday 13 May

ESTRO 2023

1 Hospital do Meixoeiro - Galaria - SERGAS, Department of Medical Physics and Radiological Protection, Vigo, Spain; 2 NucAdvisor, Consultancy, Courbevoie, France; 3 LaTIM, INSERM UMR, Université de Brest, Brest, France; 4 Department of Radiation Sciences, Radiation Physics, Umeå University, Umeå , Sweden Abstract Text In this presentation we will describe the SAMIRA study for medical equipment focused on radiotherapy, a tender with the European Comission under the SAMIRA action plan. SAMIRA foresees generating high quality evidence and developing evidence-based guidance and practical tools to improve the quality and safety of medical applications of ionising radiation and to support the implementation of Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom (Basic Safety Standards, BSS). From other SAMIRA tenders, projects such as SIMPLERAD, in which EFOMP also participates, or QUADRANT, in which ESTRO participates jointly with ESR and EANM, are also being carried out. The process for developing consensus-based guidelines is described in the task summary in the Gantt chart (Fig. 1). The main tasks are the elaboration of a questionnaire sent to the national radiation protection authorities and medical physics organizations in each of the 30 countries (EU-27 and UK, Switzerland, and Norway), the analysis of the responses, the elaboration of draft guidelines based on the responses to the questionnaire, the search for a consensus for these guidelines and finally the holding of a workshop. Each task is mainly performed by the successful bidders (EFOMP and Nuc Advisor), evaluated by the European Commission, and reviewed by the advisory panel.

It started with the elaboration of a survey that can be filled out via the web that was sent to all national radiation protection authorities and national medical physics organizations. Participation has been very high, with at least one response from the 30 countries surveyed, and 22 countries with responses from both institutions, as can be seen in the map in Figure 2. The survey contains 90 questions for medical physics organizations and 76 for national competent authorities covering the different aspects of BSS compliance related to nuclear medicine, diagnostic radiology and radiotherapy equipment.

Based on the responses to the questionnaire, a report was prepared. Twenty-eight takeaway messages were identified in the three areas, of which ten were relevant to radiotherapy. This report, which includes the takeaway messages and the outline for the guidelines, has been reviewed by the European Commission and the Advisory Panel. The vast majority of radiotherapy equipment installed in the EU complies with the requirement of article 60 (3.b) of the BSS and the use of record & verify systems (RVS) across Europe, with national mandatory regulatory use in some countries tend to confirm the level of compliance as evaluated by competent authorities in the survey. Key treatment parameters are usually not defined within current national regulations, leaving professional associations, equipment manufacturers and radiotherapy departments to define their own strategies for such data recording and verification. RVS became the standard to ensure the verification of key treatment parameters in radiation therapy departments and some countries pushed for their adoption within their national regulation. Yet, some open challenges still need to be addressed. For example, RVS do not include information about doses for imaging. IGRT occupies an increasingly important place in patient positioning and the doses related to these images should be included in the final dose report. It is necessary