General Interface with Scripting On Human Interactive Device for PSQA Automation
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PO-GePV-T-331 (Sunday, 7/10/2022) [Eastern Time (GMT-4)]
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Purpose: To develop a general software interface with scripting on human interactive device (HID) for improving the efficiency and accuracy of manual quality assurance (QA) procedures that are time-consuming and error prone.
Methods: As an initial application, we tested the developed interface on our patient specific quality assurance (PSQA) workflow that involves Varian Eclipse treatment planning system, Elekta MOSAIQ oncology information system and PTW Verisoft application. A general interface, AutoFlow was developed with scripting language AutoIt and installed on the Windows workstations of aforementioned systems for automating human operations. The integrated interface included three functional modules: (1) The QA task file module for collecting (via SQL queries) and storing the less time-sensitive information; (2) The communication module for time sensitive communication (via TCP/IP protocol) between the AutoFlow interfaces of different workstations; (3) The operation module for automating HID operations with plain scripts stored in text files. All Windows workstations in the entire PSQA process were connected, and most manual operations were automated by the AutoFlow interface sequentially or in parallel.
Results: 20 PSQA tasks were performed both manually and using the developed AutoFlow interface. On average, 175 (±12) manual operations of the PSQA procedure could be eliminated and performed by the automated process. The time to complete a PSQA task was 8(±0.8) minutes for the automated workflow, in comparison to 3(±3.1) minutes needed for manual operations.
Conclusion: We have developed the AutoFlow interface that successfully automated our PSQA procedure, and significantly reduced the time, human errors and operators’ stress. It is convenient to interlink this interface with other QA systems. Future work will focus on improving the system flexibility, stability and extending its operations to other QA procedures.
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