Linear accelerator (“linac”) downtime invariably impacts delivery of patients' scheduled treatments. Transferring a patient's treatment to an available linac is a common practice. Transferring a VMAT plan from a linac equipped with a standard-definition MLC to one equipped with a higher definition MLC is practical and routine in clinics with multiple MLC-equipped linacs. However, the reverse transfer presents a challenge because the high-definition MLC aperture shapes must be adapted for delivery with the lower definition device. An efficient method to adapt VMAT plans originally designed for a high-definition MLC to a standard definition MLC is disclosed herein. The dosimetric results of the present adaptation method are presented for head-and-neck, brain, lung and prostate VMAT plans. The delivery of the adapted plans was verified using standard phantom measurements.
