Automated retrieval of radiotherapy data for clinical trials, audit and research.

Objective: To enable fast and customisable automated collection of radiotherapy data from tomotherapy storage. Methods: Human-readable data maps (TagMaps) were created to generate DICOM-RT data from tomotherapy archives, and provided access to "hidden" information comprising delivery sinograms, positional corrections and adaptive-RT doses. Results: 797 datasets totalling 25,000 scans were batch-exported in 31.5 hours. All archived information was restored, including the data not available via commercial software. The exported data were DICOM-compliant and compatible with major commercial tools including RayStation, Pinnacle and ProSoma. The export ran without operator interventions. Conclusion: The TagMap method for DICOM-RT data modelling produced software that was many times faster than the vendor's solution, required minimal operator input and delivered high volumes of vendor-identical DICOM data. The approach is applicable to many clinical and research data processing scenarios and can be adapted to r...