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Rong Y, Chen Q, Fu Y, Yang X, Al-Hallaq HA, Wu QJ, Yuan L, Xiao Y, Cai B, Latifi K, Benedict SH, Buchsbaum JC, Qi XS. NRG Oncology Assessment of Artificial Intelligence Deep Learning-Based Auto-segmentation for Radiation Therapy: Current Developments, Clinical Considerations, and Future Directions. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2024; 119:261-280. [PMID: 37972715 PMCID: PMC11023777 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijrobp.2023.10.033] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/08/2023] [Revised: 09/16/2023] [Accepted: 10/14/2023] [Indexed: 11/19/2023]
Abstract
Deep learning neural networks (DLNN) in Artificial intelligence (AI) have been extensively explored for automatic segmentation in radiotherapy (RT). In contrast to traditional model-based methods, data-driven AI-based models for auto-segmentation have shown high accuracy in early studies in research settings and controlled environment (single institution). Vendor-provided commercial AI models are made available as part of the integrated treatment planning system (TPS) or as a stand-alone tool that provides streamlined workflow interacting with the main TPS. These commercial tools have drawn clinics' attention thanks to their significant benefit in reducing the workload from manual contouring and shortening the duration of treatment planning. However, challenges occur when applying these commercial AI-based segmentation models to diverse clinical scenarios, particularly in uncontrolled environments. Contouring nomenclature and guideline standardization has been the main task undertaken by the NRG Oncology. AI auto-segmentation holds the potential clinical trial participants to reduce interobserver variations, nomenclature non-compliance, and contouring guideline deviations. Meanwhile, trial reviewers could use AI tools to verify contour accuracy and compliance of those submitted datasets. In recognizing the growing clinical utilization and potential of these commercial AI auto-segmentation tools, NRG Oncology has formed a working group to evaluate the clinical utilization and potential of commercial AI auto-segmentation tools. The group will assess in-house and commercially available AI models, evaluation metrics, clinical challenges, and limitations, as well as future developments in addressing these challenges. General recommendations are made in terms of the implementation of these commercial AI models, as well as precautions in recognizing the challenges and limitations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yi Rong
- Mayo Clinic Arizona, Phoenix, AZ
| | - Quan Chen
- City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center Duarte, CA
| | - Yabo Fu
- Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Commack, NY
| | | | | | | | - Lulin Yuan
- Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
| | - Ying Xiao
- University of Pennsylvania/Abramson Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA
| | - Bin Cai
- The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX
| | | | - Stanley H Benedict
- University of California Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, Sacramento, CA
| | | | - X Sharon Qi
- University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
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Philip MM, Watts J, Moeini SNM, Musheb M, McKiddie F, Welch A, Nath M. Comparison of semi-automatic and manual segmentation methods for tumor delineation on head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) positron emission tomography (PET) images. Phys Med Biol 2024; 69:095005. [PMID: 38530298 DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/ad37ea] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/07/2023] [Accepted: 03/26/2024] [Indexed: 03/27/2024]
Abstract
Objective. Accurate and reproducible tumor delineation on positron emission tomography (PET) images is required to validate predictive and prognostic models based on PET radiomic features. Manual segmentation of tumors is time-consuming whereas semi-automatic methods are easily implementable and inexpensive. This study assessed the reliability of semi-automatic segmentation methods over manual segmentation for tumor delineation in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) PET images.Approach. We employed manual and six semi-automatic segmentation methods (just enough interaction (JEI), watershed, grow from seeds (GfS), flood filling (FF), 30% SUVmax and 40%SUVmax threshold) using 3D slicer software to extract 128 radiomic features from FDG-PET images of 100 HNSCC patients independently by three operators. We assessed the distributional properties of all features and considered 92 log-transformed features for subsequent analysis. For each paired comparison of a feature, we fitted a separate linear mixed effect model using the method (two levels; manual versus one semi-automatic method) as a fixed effect and the subject and the operator as the random effects. We estimated different statistics-the intraclass correlation coefficient agreement (aICC), limits of agreement (LoA), total deviation index (TDI), coverage probability (CP) and coefficient of individual agreement (CIA)-to evaluate the agreement between the manual and semi-automatic methods.Main results. Accounting for all statistics across 92 features, the JEI method consistently demonstrated acceptable agreement with the manual method, with median values of aICC = 0.86, TDI = 0.94, CP = 0.66, and CIA = 0.91.Significance. This study demonstrated that JEI method is a reliable semi-automatic method for tumor delineation on HNSCC PET images.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mahima Merin Philip
- Institute of Applied Health Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB25 2ZD, United Kingdom
| | - Jessica Watts
- National Health Service Grampian, Aberdeen AB15 6RE, United Kingdom
| | | | - Mohammed Musheb
- National Health Service Highland, Inverness IV2 3BW, United Kingdom
| | - Fergus McKiddie
- National Health Service Grampian, Aberdeen AB15 6RE, United Kingdom
| | - Andy Welch
- Institute of Education in Healthcare and Medical Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB25 2ZD, United Kingdom
| | - Mintu Nath
- Institute of Applied Health Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB25 2ZD, United Kingdom
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Nam Y, Kim SY, Kim KA, Kwon E, Lee YH, Jang J, Lee MK, Kim J, Choi Y. Development and Validation of Deep Learning-Based Automated Detection of Cervical Lymphadenopathy in Patients with Lymphoma for Treatment Response Assessment: A Bi-institutional Feasibility Study. JOURNAL OF IMAGING INFORMATICS IN MEDICINE 2024; 37:734-743. [PMID: 38316667 PMCID: PMC11031526 DOI: 10.1007/s10278-024-00966-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/03/2023] [Revised: 11/11/2023] [Accepted: 11/13/2023] [Indexed: 02/07/2024]
Abstract
The purpose is to train and evaluate a deep learning (DL) model for the accurate detection and segmentation of abnormal cervical lymph nodes (LN) on head and neck contrast-enhanced CT scans in patients diagnosed with lymphoma and evaluate the clinical utility of the DL model in response assessment. This retrospective study included patients who underwent CT for abnormal cervical LN and lymphoma assessment between January 2021 and July 2022. Patients were grouped into the development (n = 76), internal test 1 (n = 27), internal test 2 (n = 87), and external test (n = 26) cohorts. A 3D SegResNet model was used to train the CT images. The volume change rates of cervical LN across longitudinal CT scans were compared among patients with different treatment outcomes (stable, response, and progression). Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and the Bland-Altman plot were used to assess the model's segmentation performance and reliability, respectively. No significant differences in baseline clinical characteristics were found across cohorts (age, P = 0.55; sex, P = 0.13; diagnoses, P = 0.06). The mean DSC was 0.39 ± 0.2 with a precision and recall of 60.9% and 57.0%, respectively. Most LN volumes were within the limits of agreement on the Bland-Altman plot. The volume change rates among the three groups differed significantly (progression (n = 74), 342.2%; response (n = 8), - 79.2%; stable (n = 5), - 8.1%; all P < 0.01). Our proposed DL segmentation model showed modest performance in quantifying the cervical LN burden on CT in patients with lymphoma. Longitudinal changes in cervical LN volume, as predicted by the DL model, were useful for treatment response assessment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yoonho Nam
- Division of Biomedical Engineering, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Yongin-Si, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea
| | - Su-Youn Kim
- Division of Biomedical Engineering, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Yongin-Si, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea
| | - Kyu-Ah Kim
- Division of Biomedical Engineering, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Yongin-Si, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea
| | - Euna Kwon
- Division of Biomedical Engineering, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Yongin-Si, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea
| | - Yoo Hyun Lee
- College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Jinhee Jang
- Department of Radiology, College of Medicine, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Min Kyoung Lee
- Department of Radiology, College of Medicine, Yeouido St. Mary's Hospital, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea
| | - Jiwoong Kim
- Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
| | - Yangsean Choi
- Department of Radiology, College of Medicine, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
- Department of Radiology and Research Institute of Radiology, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Asan Medical Centre, 43 Olympic-Ro 88, Songpa-Gu, Seoul, 05505, Republic of Korea.
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Kraus AC, Iqbal Z, Cardan RA, Popple RA, Stanley DN, Shen S, Pogue JA, Wu X, Lee K, Marcrom S, Cardenas CE. Prospective Evaluation of Automated Contouring for CT-Based Brachytherapy for Gynecologic Malignancies. Adv Radiat Oncol 2024; 9:101417. [PMID: 38435965 PMCID: PMC10906166 DOI: 10.1016/j.adro.2023.101417] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/15/2023] [Accepted: 11/30/2023] [Indexed: 03/05/2024] Open
Abstract
Purpose The use of deep learning to auto-contour organs at risk (OARs) in gynecologic radiation treatment is well established. Yet, there is limited data investigating the prospective use of auto-contouring in clinical practice. In this study, we assess the accuracy and efficiency of auto-contouring OARs for computed tomography-based brachytherapy treatment planning of gynecologic malignancies. Methods and Materials An inhouse contouring tool automatically delineated 5 OARs in gynecologic radiation treatment planning: the bladder, small bowel, sigmoid, rectum, and urethra. Accuracy of each auto-contour was evaluated using a 5-point Likert scale: a score of 5 indicated the contour could be used without edits, while a score of 1 indicated the contour was unusable. During scoring, automated contours were edited and subsequently used for treatment planning. Dice similarity coefficient, mean surface distance, 95% Hausdorff distance, Hausdorff distance, and dosimetric changes between original and edited contours were calculated. Contour approval time and total planning time of a prospective auto-contoured (AC) cohort were compared with times from a retrospective manually contoured (MC) cohort. Results Thirty AC cases from January 2022 to July 2022 and 31 MC cases from July 2021 to January 2022 were included. The mean (±SD) Likert score for each OAR was the following: bladder 4.77 (±0.58), small bowel 3.96 (±0.91), sigmoid colon 3.92 (±0.81), rectum 4.6 (±0.71), and urethra 4.27 (±0.78). No ACs required major edits. All OARs had a mean Dice similarity coefficient > 0.86, mean surface distance < 0.48 mm, 95% Hausdorff distance < 3.2 mm, and Hausdorff distance < 10.32 mm between original and edited contours. There was no significant difference in dose-volume histogram metrics (D2.0 cc/D0.1 cc) between original and edited contours (P values > .05). The average time to plan approval in the AC cohort was 19% less than the MC cohort. (AC vs MC, 117.0 + 18.0 minutes vs 144.9 ± 64.5 minutes, P = .045). Conclusions Automated contouring is useful and accurate in clinical practice. Auto-contouring OARs streamlines radiation treatment workflows and decreases time required to design and approve gynecologic brachytherapy plans.
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Affiliation(s)
- Abigayle C. Kraus
- Heersink School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama
| | - Zohaib Iqbal
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama
| | - Rex A. Cardan
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama
| | - Richard A. Popple
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama
| | - Dennis N. Stanley
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama
| | - Sui Shen
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama
| | - Joel A. Pogue
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama
| | - Xingen Wu
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama
| | - Kevin Lee
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama
| | - Samuel Marcrom
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama
| | - Carlos E. Cardenas
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama
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Choi HS, Kang HC, Chie EK, Shin KH, Chang JH, Jang BS. Assessment of lymph node area coverage with total marrow irradiation and implementation of total marrow and lymphoid irradiation using automated deep learning-based segmentation. PLoS One 2024; 19:e0299448. [PMID: 38457432 PMCID: PMC10923438 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299448] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/28/2023] [Accepted: 02/10/2024] [Indexed: 03/10/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Total marrow irradiation (TMI) and total marrow and lymphoid irradiation (TMLI) have the advantages. However, delineating target lesions according to TMI and TMLI plans is labor-intensive and time-consuming. In addition, although the delineation of target lesions between TMI and TMLI differs, the clinical distinction is not clear, and the lymph node (LN) area coverage during TMI remains uncertain. Accordingly, this study calculates the LN area coverage according to the TMI plan. Further, a deep learning-based model for delineating LN areas is trained and evaluated. METHODS Whole-body regional LN areas were manually contoured in patients treated according to a TMI plan. The dose coverage of the delineated LN areas in the TMI plan was estimated. To train the deep learning model for automatic segmentation, additional whole-body computed tomography data were obtained from other patients. The patients and data were divided into training/validation and test groups and models were developed using the "nnU-NET" framework. The trained models were evaluated using Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), precision, recall, and Hausdorff distance 95 (HD95). The time required to contour and trim predicted results manually using the deep learning model was measured and compared. RESULTS The dose coverage for LN areas by TMI plan had V100% (the percentage of volume receiving 100% of the prescribed dose), V95%, and V90% median values of 46.0%, 62.1%, and 73.5%, respectively. The lowest V100% values were identified in the inguinal (14.7%), external iliac (21.8%), and para-aortic (42.8%) LNs. The median values of DSC, precision, recall, and HD95 of the trained model were 0.79, 0.83, 0.76, and 2.63, respectively. The time for manual contouring and simply modified predicted contouring were statistically significantly different. CONCLUSIONS The dose coverage in the inguinal, external iliac, and para-aortic LN areas was suboptimal when treatment is administered according to the TMI plan. This research demonstrates that the automatic delineation of LN areas using deep learning can facilitate the implementation of TMLI.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hyeon Seok Choi
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, South Korea
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Hyun-Cheol Kang
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, South Korea
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Eui Kyu Chie
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, South Korea
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Kyung Hwan Shin
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, South Korea
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Ji Hyun Chang
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, South Korea
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Bum-Sup Jang
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, South Korea
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea
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Wang Y, Rahman A, Duggar WN, Thomas TV, Roberts PR, Vijayakumar S, Jiao Z, Bian L, Wang H. A gradient mapping guided explainable deep neural network for extracapsular extension identification in 3D head and neck cancer computed tomography images. Med Phys 2024; 51:2007-2019. [PMID: 37643447 DOI: 10.1002/mp.16680] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/09/2022] [Revised: 07/13/2023] [Accepted: 08/03/2023] [Indexed: 08/31/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Diagnosis and treatment management for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is guided by routine diagnostic head and neck computed tomography (CT) scans to identify tumor and lymph node features. The extracapsular extension (ECE) is a strong predictor of patients' survival outcomes with HNSCC. It is essential to detect the occurrence of ECE as it changes staging and treatment planning for patients. Current clinical ECE detection relies on visual identification and pathologic confirmation conducted by clinicians. However, manual annotation of the lymph node region is a required data preprocessing step in most of the current machine learning-based ECE diagnosis studies. PURPOSE In this paper, we propose a Gradient Mapping Guided Explainable Network (GMGENet) framework to perform ECE identification automatically without requiring annotated lymph node region information. METHODS The gradient-weighted class activation mapping (Grad-CAM) technique is applied to guide the deep learning algorithm to focus on the regions that are highly related to ECE. The proposed framework includes an extractor and a classifier. In a joint training process, informative volumes of interest (VOIs) are extracted by the extractor without labeled lymph node region information, and the classifier learns the pattern to classify the extracted VOIs into ECE positive and negative. RESULTS In evaluation, the proposed methods are well-trained and tested using cross-validation. GMGENet achieved test accuracy and area under the curve (AUC) of 92.2% and 89.3%, respectively. GMGENetV2 achieved 90.3% accuracy and 91.7% AUC in the test. The results were compared with different existing models and further confirmed and explained by generating ECE probability heatmaps via a Grad-CAM technique. The presence or absence of ECE has been analyzed and correlated with ground truth histopathological findings. CONCLUSIONS The proposed deep network can learn meaningful patterns to identify ECE without providing lymph node contours. The introduced ECE heatmaps will contribute to the clinical implementations of the proposed model and reveal unknown features to radiologists. The outcome of this study is expected to promote the implementation of explainable artificial intelligence-assiste ECE detection.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yibin Wang
- Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, Mississippi, USA
| | - Abdur Rahman
- Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, Mississippi, USA
| | - William Neil Duggar
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi, USA
| | - Toms V Thomas
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi, USA
| | - Paul Russell Roberts
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi, USA
| | - Srinivasan Vijayakumar
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi, USA
| | - Zhicheng Jiao
- Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
| | - Linkan Bian
- Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, Mississippi, USA
| | - Haifeng Wang
- Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, Mississippi, USA
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi, USA
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Walter A, Hoegen-Saßmannshausen P, Stanic G, Rodrigues JP, Adeberg S, Jäkel O, Frank M, Giske K. Segmentation of 71 Anatomical Structures Necessary for the Evaluation of Guideline-Conforming Clinical Target Volumes in Head and Neck Cancers. Cancers (Basel) 2024; 16:415. [PMID: 38254904 DOI: 10.3390/cancers16020415] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/28/2023] [Revised: 12/28/2023] [Accepted: 01/08/2024] [Indexed: 01/24/2024] Open
Abstract
The delineation of the clinical target volumes (CTVs) for radiation therapy is time-consuming, requires intensive training and shows high inter-observer variability. Supervised deep-learning methods depend heavily on consistent training data; thus, State-of-the-Art research focuses on making CTV labels more homogeneous and strictly bounding them to current standards. International consensus expert guidelines standardize CTV delineation by conditioning the extension of the clinical target volume on the surrounding anatomical structures. Training strategies that directly follow the construction rules given in the expert guidelines or the possibility of quantifying the conformance of manually drawn contours to the guidelines are still missing. Seventy-one anatomical structures that are relevant to CTV delineation in head- and neck-cancer patients, according to the expert guidelines, were segmented on 104 computed tomography scans, to assess the possibility of automating their segmentation by State-of-the-Art deep learning methods. All 71 anatomical structures were subdivided into three subsets of non-overlapping structures, and a 3D nnU-Net model with five-fold cross-validation was trained for each subset, to automatically segment the structures on planning computed tomography scans. We report the DICE, Hausdorff distance and surface DICE for 71 + 5 anatomical structures, for most of which no previous segmentation accuracies have been reported. For those structures for which prediction values have been reported, our segmentation accuracy matched or exceeded the reported values. The predictions from our models were always better than those predicted by the TotalSegmentator. The sDICE with 2 mm margin was larger than 80% for almost all the structures. Individual structures with decreased segmentation accuracy are analyzed and discussed with respect to their impact on the CTV delineation following the expert guidelines. No deviation is expected to affect the rule-based automation of the CTV delineation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexandra Walter
- Department of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
- Heidelberg Institute of Radiation Oncology (HIRO), National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology (NCRO), 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Scientific Computing Center, Zirkel 2, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
| | - Philipp Hoegen-Saßmannshausen
- Heidelberg Institute of Radiation Oncology (HIRO), National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology (NCRO), 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Heidelberg University Hospital, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
- Clinical Cooperation Unit Radiation Oncology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
- National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), NCT Heidelberg, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Goran Stanic
- Department of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
- Heidelberg Institute of Radiation Oncology (HIRO), National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology (NCRO), 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
- Faculty of Physics and Astronomy, University of Heidelberg, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Joao Pedro Rodrigues
- Department of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
- Heidelberg Institute of Radiation Oncology (HIRO), National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology (NCRO), 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Sebastian Adeberg
- Department of Radiotherapy and Radiation Oncology, Marburg University Hospital, 35043 Marburg, Germany
- Marburg Ion-Beam Therapy Center (MIT), 35043 Marburg, Germany
- Universitäres Centrum für Tumorerkrankungen (UCT), 35033 Marburg, Germany
| | - Oliver Jäkel
- Department of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
- Heidelberg Institute of Radiation Oncology (HIRO), National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology (NCRO), 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
- Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Center (HIT), 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Martin Frank
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Scientific Computing Center, Zirkel 2, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
| | - Kristina Giske
- Department of Medical Physics in Radiation Oncology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
- Heidelberg Institute of Radiation Oncology (HIRO), National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology (NCRO), 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
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Maroongroge S, Mohamed ASR, Nguyen C, Guma De la Vega J, Frank SJ, Garden AS, Gunn BG, Lee A, Mayo L, Moreno A, Morrison WH, Phan J, Spiotto MT, Court LE, Fuller CD, Rosenthal DI, Netherton TJ. Clinical acceptability of automatically generated lymph node levels and structures of deglutition and mastication for head and neck radiation therapy. Phys Imaging Radiat Oncol 2024; 29:100540. [PMID: 38356692 PMCID: PMC10864833 DOI: 10.1016/j.phro.2024.100540] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/30/2023] [Revised: 01/22/2024] [Accepted: 01/24/2024] [Indexed: 02/16/2024] Open
Abstract
Background and Purpose Auto-contouring of complex anatomy in computed tomography (CT) scans is a highly anticipated solution to many problems in radiotherapy. In this study, artificial intelligence (AI)-based auto-contouring models were clinically validated for lymph node levels and structures of swallowing and chewing in the head and neck. Materials and Methods CT scans of 145 head and neck radiotherapy patients were retrospectively curated. One cohort (n = 47) was used to analyze seven lymph node levels and the other (n = 98) used to analyze 17 swallowing and chewing structures. Separate nnUnet models were trained and validated using the separate cohorts. For the lymph node levels, preference and clinical acceptability of AI vs human contours were scored. For the swallowing and chewing structures, clinical acceptability was scored. Quantitative analyses of the test sets were performed for AI vs human contours for all structures using overlap and distance metrics. Results Median Dice Similarity Coefficient ranged from 0.77 to 0.89 for lymph node levels and 0.86 to 0.96 for chewing and swallowing structures. The AI contours were superior to or equally preferred to the manual contours at rates ranging from 75% to 91%; there was not a significant difference in clinical acceptability for nodal levels I-V for manual versus AI contours. Across all AI-generated lymph node level contours, 92% were rated as usable with stylistic to no edits. Of the 340 contours in the chewing and swallowing cohort, 4% required minor edits. Conclusions An accurate approach was developed to auto-contour lymph node levels and chewing and swallowing structures on CT images for patients with intact nodal anatomy. Only a small portion of test set auto-contours required minor edits.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sean Maroongroge
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Abdallah SR. Mohamed
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Callistus Nguyen
- Department of Radiation Physics, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Jean Guma De la Vega
- Department of Radiation Physics, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Steven J. Frank
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Adam S. Garden
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Brandon G. Gunn
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Anna Lee
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Lauren Mayo
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Amy Moreno
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - William H. Morrison
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Jack Phan
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Michael T. Spiotto
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Laurence E. Court
- Department of Radiation Physics, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Clifton D. Fuller
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - David I. Rosenthal
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
| | - Tucker J. Netherton
- Department of Radiation Physics, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, United States
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Paudyal R, Jiang J, Han J, Diplas BH, Riaz N, Hatzoglou V, Lee N, Deasy JO, Veeraraghavan H, Shukla-Dave A. Auto-segmentation of neck nodal metastases using self-distilled masked image transformer on longitudinal MR images. BJR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 2024; 1:ubae004. [PMID: 38476956 PMCID: PMC10928808 DOI: 10.1093/bjrai/ubae004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/15/2023] [Revised: 01/23/2024] [Accepted: 01/24/2024] [Indexed: 03/14/2024]
Abstract
Objectives Auto-segmentation promises greater speed and lower inter-reader variability than manual segmentations in radiation oncology clinical practice. This study aims to implement and evaluate the accuracy of the auto-segmentation algorithm, "Masked Image modeling using the vision Transformers (SMIT)," for neck nodal metastases on longitudinal T2-weighted (T2w) MR images in oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) patients. Methods This prospective clinical trial study included 123 human papillomaviruses (HPV-positive [+]) related OSPCC patients who received concurrent chemoradiotherapy. T2w MR images were acquired on 3 T at pre-treatment (Tx), week 0, and intra-Tx weeks (1-3). Manual delineations of metastatic neck nodes from 123 OPSCC patients were used for the SMIT auto-segmentation, and total tumor volumes were calculated. Standard statistical analyses compared contour volumes from SMIT vs manual segmentation (Wilcoxon signed-rank test [WSRT]), and Spearman's rank correlation coefficients (ρ) were computed. Segmentation accuracy was evaluated on the test data set using the dice similarity coefficient (DSC) metric value. P-values <0.05 were considered significant. Results No significant difference in manual and SMIT delineated tumor volume at pre-Tx (8.68 ± 7.15 vs 8.38 ± 7.01 cm3, P = 0.26 [WSRT]), and the Bland-Altman method established the limits of agreement as -1.71 to 2.31 cm3, with a mean difference of 0.30 cm3. SMIT model and manually delineated tumor volume estimates were highly correlated (ρ = 0.84-0.96, P < 0.001). The mean DSC metric values were 0.86, 0.85, 0.77, and 0.79 at the pre-Tx and intra-Tx weeks (1-3), respectively. Conclusions The SMIT algorithm provides sufficient segmentation accuracy for oncological applications in HPV+ OPSCC. Advances in knowledge First evaluation of auto-segmentation with SMIT using longitudinal T2w MRI in HPV+ OPSCC.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ramesh Paudyal
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
| | - Jue Jiang
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
| | - James Han
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
| | - Bill H Diplas
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
| | - Nadeem Riaz
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
| | - Vaios Hatzoglou
- Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
| | - Nancy Lee
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
| | - Joseph O Deasy
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
| | - Harini Veeraraghavan
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
| | - Amita Shukla-Dave
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
- Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, United States
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10
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McDonald BA, Cardenas CE, O'Connell N, Ahmed S, Naser MA, Wahid KA, Xu J, Thill D, Zuhour RJ, Mesko S, Augustyn A, Buszek SM, Grant S, Chapman BV, Bagley AF, He R, Mohamed ASR, Christodouleas J, Brock KK, Fuller CD. Investigation of autosegmentation techniques on T2-weighted MRI for off-line dose reconstruction in MR-linac workflow for head and neck cancers. Med Phys 2024; 51:278-291. [PMID: 37475466 PMCID: PMC10799175 DOI: 10.1002/mp.16582] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/03/2022] [Revised: 06/01/2023] [Accepted: 06/12/2023] [Indexed: 07/22/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND In order to accurately accumulate delivered dose for head and neck cancer patients treated with the Adapt to Position workflow on the 1.5T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-linear accelerator (MR-linac), the low-resolution T2-weighted MRIs used for daily setup must be segmented to enable reconstruction of the delivered dose at each fraction. PURPOSE In this pilot study, we evaluate various autosegmentation methods for head and neck organs at risk (OARs) on on-board setup MRIs from the MR-linac for off-line reconstruction of delivered dose. METHODS Seven OARs (parotid glands, submandibular glands, mandible, spinal cord, and brainstem) were contoured on 43 images by seven observers each. Ground truth contours were generated using a simultaneous truth and performance level estimation (STAPLE) algorithm. Twenty total autosegmentation methods were evaluated in ADMIRE: 1-9) atlas-based autosegmentation using a population atlas library (PAL) of 5/10/15 patients with STAPLE, patch fusion (PF), random forest (RF) for label fusion; 10-19) autosegmentation using images from a patient's 1-4 prior fractions (individualized patient prior [IPP]) using STAPLE/PF/RF; 20) deep learning (DL) (3D ResUNet trained on 43 ground truth structure sets plus 45 contoured by one observer). Execution time was measured for each method. Autosegmented structures were compared to ground truth structures using the Dice similarity coefficient, mean surface distance (MSD), Hausdorff distance (HD), and Jaccard index (JI). For each metric and OAR, performance was compared to the inter-observer variability using Dunn's test with control. Methods were compared pairwise using the Steel-Dwass test for each metric pooled across all OARs. Further dosimetric analysis was performed on three high-performing autosegmentation methods (DL, IPP with RF and 4 fractions [IPP_RF_4], IPP with 1 fraction [IPP_1]), and one low-performing (PAL with STAPLE and 5 atlases [PAL_ST_5]). For five patients, delivered doses from clinical plans were recalculated on setup images with ground truth and autosegmented structure sets. Differences in maximum and mean dose to each structure between the ground truth and autosegmented structures were calculated and correlated with geometric metrics. RESULTS DL and IPP methods performed best overall, all significantly outperforming inter-observer variability and with no significant difference between methods in pairwise comparison. PAL methods performed worst overall; most were not significantly different from the inter-observer variability or from each other. DL was the fastest method (33 s per case) and PAL methods the slowest (3.7-13.8 min per case). Execution time increased with a number of prior fractions/atlases for IPP and PAL. For DL, IPP_1, and IPP_RF_4, the majority (95%) of dose differences were within ± 250 cGy from ground truth, but outlier differences up to 785 cGy occurred. Dose differences were much higher for PAL_ST_5, with outlier differences up to 1920 cGy. Dose differences showed weak but significant correlations with all geometric metrics (R2 between 0.030 and 0.314). CONCLUSIONS The autosegmentation methods offering the best combination of performance and execution time are DL and IPP_1. Dose reconstruction on on-board T2-weighted MRIs is feasible with autosegmented structures with minimal dosimetric variation from ground truth, but contours should be visually inspected prior to dose reconstruction in an end-to-end dose accumulation workflow.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brigid A McDonald
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Carlos E Cardenas
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA
| | | | - Sara Ahmed
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Mohamed A Naser
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Kareem A Wahid
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | | | | | - Raed J Zuhour
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, USA
| | - Shane Mesko
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Alexander Augustyn
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Samantha M Buszek
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Stephen Grant
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Bhavana V Chapman
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Alexander F Bagley
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Renjie He
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Abdallah S R Mohamed
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | | | - Kristy K Brock
- Department of Imaging Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
- Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Clifton D Fuller
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
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11
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Gay SS, Cardenas CE, Nguyen C, Netherton TJ, Yu C, Zhao Y, Skett S, Patel T, Adjogatse D, Guerrero Urbano T, Naidoo K, Beadle BM, Yang J, Aggarwal A, Court LE. Fully-automated, CT-only GTV contouring for palliative head and neck radiotherapy. Sci Rep 2023; 13:21797. [PMID: 38066074 PMCID: PMC10709623 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-48944-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2023] [Accepted: 12/01/2023] [Indexed: 12/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Planning for palliative radiotherapy is performed without the advantage of MR or PET imaging in many clinics. Here, we investigated CT-only GTV delineation for palliative treatment of head and neck cancer. Two multi-institutional datasets of palliative-intent treatment plans were retrospectively acquired: a set of 102 non-contrast-enhanced CTs and a set of 96 contrast-enhanced CTs. The nnU-Net auto-segmentation network was chosen for its strength in medical image segmentation, and five approaches separately trained: (1) heuristic-cropped, non-contrast images with a single GTV channel, (2) cropping around a manually-placed point in the tumor center for non-contrast images with a single GTV channel, (3) contrast-enhanced images with a single GTV channel, (4) contrast-enhanced images with separate primary and nodal GTV channels, and (5) contrast-enhanced images along with synthetic MR images with separate primary and nodal GTV channels. Median Dice similarity coefficient ranged from 0.6 to 0.7, surface Dice from 0.30 to 0.56, and 95th Hausdorff distance from 14.7 to 19.7 mm across the five approaches. Only surface Dice exhibited statistically-significant difference across these five approaches using a two-tailed Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test (p ≤ 0.05). Our CT-only results met or exceeded published values for head and neck GTV autocontouring using multi-modality images. However, significant edits would be necessary before clinical use in palliative radiotherapy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Skylar S Gay
- Unit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX, USA.
| | - Carlos E Cardenas
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA
| | - Callistus Nguyen
- Unit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA
| | - Tucker J Netherton
- Unit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA
| | - Cenji Yu
- Unit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX, USA
| | - Yao Zhao
- Unit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX, USA
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Jinzhong Yang
- Unit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA
| | | | - Laurence E Court
- Unit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA
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12
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Liao W, Luo X, He Y, Dong Y, Li C, Li K, Zhang S, Zhang S, Wang G, Xiao J. Comprehensive Evaluation of a Deep Learning Model for Automatic Organs-at-Risk Segmentation on Heterogeneous Computed Tomography Images for Abdominal Radiation Therapy. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2023; 117:994-1006. [PMID: 37244625 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijrobp.2023.05.034] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/08/2022] [Revised: 03/13/2023] [Accepted: 05/18/2023] [Indexed: 05/29/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE Our purpose was to develop a deep learning model (AbsegNet) that produces accurate contours of 16 organs at risk (OARs) for abdominal malignancies as an essential part of fully automated radiation treatment planning. METHODS AND MATERIALS Three data sets with 544 computed tomography scans were retrospectively collected. Data set 1 was split into 300 training cases and 128 test cases (cohort 1) for AbsegNet. Data set 2, including cohort 2 (n = 24) and cohort 3 (n = 20), were used to validate AbsegNet externally. Data set 3, including cohort 4 (n = 40) and cohort 5 (n = 32), were used to clinically assess the accuracy of AbsegNet-generated contours. Each cohort was from a different center. The Dice similarity coefficient and 95th-percentile Hausdorff distance were calculated to evaluate the delineation quality for each OAR. Clinical accuracy evaluation was classified into 4 levels: no revision, minor revisions (0% < volumetric revision degrees [VRD] ≤ 10%), moderate revisions (10% ≤ VRD < 20%), and major revisions (VRD ≥20%). RESULTS For all OARs, AbsegNet achieved a mean Dice similarity coefficient of 86.73%, 85.65%, and 88.04% in cohorts 1, 2, and 3, respectively, and a mean 95th-percentile Hausdorff distance of 8.92, 10.18, and 12.40 mm, respectively. The performance of AbsegNet outperformed SwinUNETR, DeepLabV3+, Attention-UNet, UNet, and 3D-UNet. When experts evaluated contours from cohorts 4 and 5, 4 OARs (liver, kidney_L, kidney_R, and spleen) of all patients were scored as having no revision, and over 87.5% of patients with contours of the stomach, esophagus, adrenals, or rectum were considered as having no or minor revisions. Only 15.0% of patients with colon and small bowel contours required major revisions. CONCLUSIONS We propose a novel deep-learning model to delineate OARs on diverse data sets. Most contours produced by AbsegNet are accurate and robust and are, therefore, clinically applicable and helpful to facilitate radiation therapy workflow.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wenjun Liao
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Radiation Oncology Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Sichuan Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Sichuan Cancer Hospital & Institute, Sichuan Cancer Center, Affiliated Cancer Hospital of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
| | - Xiangde Luo
- School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China; Shanghai AI Laboratory, Shanghai, China
| | - Yuan He
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China
| | - Ye Dong
- Department of NanFang PET Center, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Churong Li
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Radiation Oncology Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Sichuan Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Sichuan Cancer Hospital & Institute, Sichuan Cancer Center, Affiliated Cancer Hospital of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
| | - Kang Li
- West China Biomedical Big Data Center
| | - Shichuan Zhang
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Radiation Oncology Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Sichuan Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Sichuan Cancer Hospital & Institute, Sichuan Cancer Center, Affiliated Cancer Hospital of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
| | - Shaoting Zhang
- School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China; Shanghai AI Laboratory, Shanghai, China
| | - Guotai Wang
- School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China; Shanghai AI Laboratory, Shanghai, China
| | - Jianghong Xiao
- Radiotherapy Physics & Technology Center, Department of Radiation Oncology, Cancer Center, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
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13
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Tsilivigkos C, Athanasopoulos M, Micco RD, Giotakis A, Mastronikolis NS, Mulita F, Verras GI, Maroulis I, Giotakis E. Deep Learning Techniques and Imaging in Otorhinolaryngology-A State-of-the-Art Review. J Clin Med 2023; 12:6973. [PMID: 38002588 PMCID: PMC10672270 DOI: 10.3390/jcm12226973] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/14/2023] [Revised: 11/02/2023] [Accepted: 11/06/2023] [Indexed: 11/26/2023] Open
Abstract
Over the last decades, the field of medicine has witnessed significant progress in artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), and deep learning (DL) systems. Otorhinolaryngology, and imaging in its various subspecialties, has not remained untouched by this transformative trend. As the medical landscape evolves, the integration of these technologies becomes imperative in augmenting patient care, fostering innovation, and actively participating in the ever-evolving synergy between computer vision techniques in otorhinolaryngology and AI. To that end, we conducted a thorough search on MEDLINE for papers published until June 2023, utilizing the keywords 'otorhinolaryngology', 'imaging', 'computer vision', 'artificial intelligence', and 'deep learning', and at the same time conducted manual searching in the references section of the articles included in our manuscript. Our search culminated in the retrieval of 121 related articles, which were subsequently subdivided into the following categories: imaging in head and neck, otology, and rhinology. Our objective is to provide a comprehensive introduction to this burgeoning field, tailored for both experienced specialists and aspiring residents in the domain of deep learning algorithms in imaging techniques in otorhinolaryngology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christos Tsilivigkos
- 1st Department of Otolaryngology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Hippocrateion Hospital, 115 27 Athens, Greece; (A.G.); (E.G.)
| | - Michail Athanasopoulos
- Department of Otolaryngology, University Hospital of Patras, 265 04 Patras, Greece; (M.A.); (N.S.M.)
| | - Riccardo di Micco
- Department of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery, Medical School of Hannover, 30625 Hannover, Germany;
| | - Aris Giotakis
- 1st Department of Otolaryngology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Hippocrateion Hospital, 115 27 Athens, Greece; (A.G.); (E.G.)
| | - Nicholas S. Mastronikolis
- Department of Otolaryngology, University Hospital of Patras, 265 04 Patras, Greece; (M.A.); (N.S.M.)
| | - Francesk Mulita
- Department of Surgery, University Hospital of Patras, 265 04 Patras, Greece; (G.-I.V.); (I.M.)
| | - Georgios-Ioannis Verras
- Department of Surgery, University Hospital of Patras, 265 04 Patras, Greece; (G.-I.V.); (I.M.)
| | - Ioannis Maroulis
- Department of Surgery, University Hospital of Patras, 265 04 Patras, Greece; (G.-I.V.); (I.M.)
| | - Evangelos Giotakis
- 1st Department of Otolaryngology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Hippocrateion Hospital, 115 27 Athens, Greece; (A.G.); (E.G.)
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14
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Zhong NN, Wang HQ, Huang XY, Li ZZ, Cao LM, Huo FY, Liu B, Bu LL. Enhancing head and neck tumor management with artificial intelligence: Integration and perspectives. Semin Cancer Biol 2023; 95:52-74. [PMID: 37473825 DOI: 10.1016/j.semcancer.2023.07.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/29/2023] [Revised: 07/11/2023] [Accepted: 07/15/2023] [Indexed: 07/22/2023]
Abstract
Head and neck tumors (HNTs) constitute a multifaceted ensemble of pathologies that primarily involve regions such as the oral cavity, pharynx, and nasal cavity. The intricate anatomical structure of these regions poses considerable challenges to efficacious treatment strategies. Despite the availability of myriad treatment modalities, the overall therapeutic efficacy for HNTs continues to remain subdued. In recent years, the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare practices has garnered noteworthy attention. AI modalities, inclusive of machine learning (ML), neural networks (NNs), and deep learning (DL), when amalgamated into the holistic management of HNTs, promise to augment the precision, safety, and efficacy of treatment regimens. The integration of AI within HNT management is intricately intertwined with domains such as medical imaging, bioinformatics, and medical robotics. This article intends to scrutinize the cutting-edge advancements and prospective applications of AI in the realm of HNTs, elucidating AI's indispensable role in prevention, diagnosis, treatment, prognostication, research, and inter-sectoral integration. The overarching objective is to stimulate scholarly discourse and invigorate insights among medical practitioners and researchers to propel further exploration, thereby facilitating superior therapeutic alternatives for patients.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nian-Nian Zhong
- State Key Laboratory of Oral & Maxillofacial Reconstruction and Regeneration, Key Laboratory of Oral Biomedicine Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Stomatology, School & Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
| | - Han-Qi Wang
- State Key Laboratory of Oral & Maxillofacial Reconstruction and Regeneration, Key Laboratory of Oral Biomedicine Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Stomatology, School & Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
| | - Xin-Yue Huang
- State Key Laboratory of Oral & Maxillofacial Reconstruction and Regeneration, Key Laboratory of Oral Biomedicine Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Stomatology, School & Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
| | - Zi-Zhan Li
- State Key Laboratory of Oral & Maxillofacial Reconstruction and Regeneration, Key Laboratory of Oral Biomedicine Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Stomatology, School & Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
| | - Lei-Ming Cao
- State Key Laboratory of Oral & Maxillofacial Reconstruction and Regeneration, Key Laboratory of Oral Biomedicine Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Stomatology, School & Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
| | - Fang-Yi Huo
- State Key Laboratory of Oral & Maxillofacial Reconstruction and Regeneration, Key Laboratory of Oral Biomedicine Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Stomatology, School & Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
| | - Bing Liu
- State Key Laboratory of Oral & Maxillofacial Reconstruction and Regeneration, Key Laboratory of Oral Biomedicine Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Stomatology, School & Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China; Department of Oral & Maxillofacial - Head Neck Oncology, School & Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China.
| | - Lin-Lin Bu
- State Key Laboratory of Oral & Maxillofacial Reconstruction and Regeneration, Key Laboratory of Oral Biomedicine Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Stomatology, School & Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China; Department of Oral & Maxillofacial - Head Neck Oncology, School & Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China.
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15
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Chen Y, Gensheimer MF, Bagshaw HP, Butler S, Yu L, Zhou Y, Shen L, Kovalchuk N, Surucu M, Chang DT, Xing L, Han B. Patient-Specific Auto-segmentation on Daily kVCT Images for Adaptive Radiation Therapy. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 2023; 117:505-514. [PMID: 37141982 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijrobp.2023.04.026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/10/2022] [Revised: 04/18/2023] [Accepted: 04/25/2023] [Indexed: 05/06/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE This study explored deep-learning-based patient-specific auto-segmentation using transfer learning on daily RefleXion kilovoltage computed tomography (kVCT) images to facilitate adaptive radiation therapy, based on data from the first group of patients treated with the innovative RefleXion system. METHODS AND MATERIALS For head and neck (HaN) and pelvic cancers, a deep convolutional segmentation network was initially trained on a population data set that contained 67 and 56 patient cases, respectively. Then the pretrained population network was adapted to the specific RefleXion patient by fine-tuning the network weights with a transfer learning method. For each of the 6 collected RefleXion HaN cases and 4 pelvic cases, initial planning computed tomography (CT) scans and 5 to 26 sets of daily kVCT images were used for the patient-specific learning and evaluation separately. The performance of the patient-specific network was compared with the population network and the clinical rigid registration method and evaluated by the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) with manual contours being the reference. The corresponding dosimetric effects resulting from different auto-segmentation and registration methods were also investigated. RESULTS The proposed patient-specific network achieved mean DSC results of 0.88 for 3 HaN organs at risk (OARs) of interest and 0.90 for 8 pelvic target and OARs, outperforming the population network (0.70 and 0.63) and the registration method (0.72 and 0.72). The DSC of the patient-specific network gradually increased with the increment of longitudinal training cases and approached saturation with more than 6 training cases. Compared with using the registration contour, the target and OAR mean doses and dose-volume histograms obtained using the patient-specific auto-segmentation were closer to the results using the manual contour. CONCLUSIONS Auto-segmentation of RefleXion kVCT images based on the patient-specific transfer learning could achieve higher accuracy, outperforming a common population network and clinical registration-based method. This approach shows promise in improving dose evaluation accuracy in RefleXion adaptive radiation therapy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yizheng Chen
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford University, Stanford, California
| | | | - Hilary P Bagshaw
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford University, Stanford, California
| | - Santino Butler
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford University, Stanford, California
| | - Lequan Yu
- Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
| | - Yuyin Zhou
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California
| | - Liyue Shen
- Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
| | - Nataliya Kovalchuk
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford University, Stanford, California
| | - Murat Surucu
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford University, Stanford, California
| | - Daniel T Chang
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
| | - Lei Xing
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford University, Stanford, California
| | - Bin Han
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford University, Stanford, California.
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Hou Z, Gao S, Liu J, Yin Y, Zhang L, Han Y, Yan J, Li S. Clinical evaluation of deep learning-based automatic clinical target volume segmentation: a single-institution multi-site tumor experience. LA RADIOLOGIA MEDICA 2023; 128:1250-1261. [PMID: 37597126 DOI: 10.1007/s11547-023-01690-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2023] [Accepted: 07/25/2023] [Indexed: 08/21/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE The large variability in tumor appearance and shape makes manual delineation of the clinical target volume (CTV) time-consuming, and the results depend on the oncologists' experience. Whereas deep learning techniques have allowed oncologists to automate the CTV delineation, multi-site tumor analysis is often lacking in the literature. This study aimed to evaluate the deep learning models that automatically contour CTVs of tumors at various sites on computed tomography (CT) images from objective and subjective perspectives. METHODS AND MATERIALS 577 patients were selected for the present study, including nasopharyngeal (n = 34), esophageal (n = 40), breast-conserving surgery (BCS) (left-sided, n = 71; right-sided, n = 71), breast-radical mastectomy (BRM) (left-sided, n = 43; right-sided, n = 37), cervical (radical radiotherapy, n = 45; postoperative, n = 85), prostate (n = 42), and rectal (n = 109) carcinomas. Manually delineated CTV contours by radiation oncologists are served as ground truth. Four models were evaluated: Flexnet, Unet, Vnet, and Segresnet, which are commercially available in the medical product "AccuLearning AI model training platform". The data were divided into the training, validation, and testing set at a ratio of 5:1:4. The geometric metrics, including Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) and Hausdorff Distance (HD), were calculated for objective evaluation. For subjective assessment, oncologists rated the segmentation contours of the testing set visually. RESULTS High correlations were observed between automatic and manual contours. Based on the results of the independent test group, most of the patients achieved satisfactory quantitative results (DSC > 0.8), except for patients with esophageal carcinoma (DSC: 0.62-0.64). The subjective review indicated that 82.65% of predicted CTVs scored either as clinically accepting (8.68%) or requiring minor revision (73.97%), and no patients were scored as rejected. CONCLUSION This experimental work demonstrated that auto-generated contours could serve as an initial template to help oncologists save time in CTV delineation. The deep learning-based auto-segmentations achieve acceptable accuracy and show the potential to improve clinical efficiency for radiotherapy of a variety of cancer.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhen Hou
- The Comprehensive Cancer Centre of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210000, Jiangsu, China
| | - Shanbao Gao
- The Comprehensive Cancer Centre of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210000, Jiangsu, China
| | - Juan Liu
- The Comprehensive Cancer Centre of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210000, Jiangsu, China
| | - Yicai Yin
- The Comprehensive Cancer Centre of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210000, Jiangsu, China
| | - Ling Zhang
- The Comprehensive Cancer Centre of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210000, Jiangsu, China
| | - Yongchao Han
- The Comprehensive Cancer Centre of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210000, Jiangsu, China
| | - Jing Yan
- The Comprehensive Cancer Centre of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210000, Jiangsu, China.
| | - Shuangshuang Li
- The Comprehensive Cancer Centre of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210000, Jiangsu, China.
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17
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McQuinlan Y, Brouwer CL, Lin Z, Gan Y, Sung Kim J, van Elmpt W, Gooding MJ. An investigation into the risk of population bias in deep learning autocontouring. Radiother Oncol 2023; 186:109747. [PMID: 37330053 DOI: 10.1016/j.radonc.2023.109747] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/19/2023] [Revised: 05/30/2023] [Accepted: 06/08/2023] [Indexed: 06/19/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE To date, data used in the development of Deep Learning-based automatic contouring (DLC) algorithms have been largely sourced from single geographic populations. This study aimed to evaluate the risk of population-based bias by determining whether the performance of an autocontouring system is impacted by geographic population. MATERIALS AND METHODS 80 Head Neck CT deidentified scans were collected from four clinics in Europe (n = 2) and Asia (n = 2). A single observer manually delineated 16 organs-at-risk in each. Subsequently, the data was contoured using a DLC solution, and trained using single institution (European) data. Autocontours were compared to manual delineations using quantitative measures. A Kruskal-Wallis test was used to test for any difference between populations. Clinical acceptability of automatic and manual contours to observers from each participating institution was assessed using a blinded subjective evaluation. RESULTS Seven organs showed a significant difference in volume between groups. Four organs showed statistical differences in quantitative similarity measures. The qualitative test showed greater variation in acceptance of contouring between observers than between data from different origins, with greater acceptance by the South Korean observers. CONCLUSION Much of the statistical difference in quantitative performance could be explained by the difference in organ volume impacting the contour similarity measures and the small sample size. However, the qualitative assessment suggests that observer perception bias has a greater impact on the apparent clinical acceptability than quantitatively observed differences. This investigation of potential geographic bias should extend to more patients, populations, and anatomical regions in the future.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Charlotte L Brouwer
- University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Department of Radiation Oncology, Groningen, The Netherlands.
| | - Zhixiong Lin
- Shantou University Medical Centre, Guangdong, China.
| | - Yong Gan
- Shantou University Medical Centre, Guangdong, China.
| | - Jin Sung Kim
- Yonsei University Health System, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
| | - Wouter van Elmpt
- Department of Radiation Oncology (MAASTRO), GROW - School for Oncology and Reproduction, Maastricht University Medical Centre+, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
| | - Mark J Gooding
- Mirada Medical Ltd, Oxford, United Kingdom; Inpictura Ltd, Oxford, United Kingdom.
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18
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Court L, Aggarwal A, Burger H, Cardenas C, Chung C, Douglas R, du Toit M, Jaffray D, Jhingran A, Mejia M, Mumme R, Muya S, Naidoo K, Ndumbalo J, Nealon K, Netherton T, Nguyen C, Olanrewaju N, Parkes J, Shaw W, Trauernicht C, Xu M, Yang J, Zhang L, Simonds H, Beadle BM. Addressing the Global Expertise Gap in Radiation Oncology: The Radiation Planning Assistant. JCO Glob Oncol 2023; 9:e2200431. [PMID: 37471671 PMCID: PMC10581646 DOI: 10.1200/go.22.00431] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/18/2022] [Revised: 02/08/2023] [Accepted: 04/24/2023] [Indexed: 07/22/2023] Open
Abstract
PURPOSE Automation, including the use of artificial intelligence, has been identified as a possible opportunity to help reduce the gap in access and quality for radiotherapy and other aspects of cancer care. The Radiation Planning Assistant (RPA) project was conceived in 2015 (and funded in 2016) to use automated contouring and treatment planning algorithms to support the efforts of oncologists in low- and middle-income countries, allowing them to scale their efforts and treat more patients safely and efficiently (to increase access). DESIGN In this review, we discuss the development of the RPA, with a particular focus on clinical acceptability and safety/risk across jurisdictions as these are important indicators for the successful future deployment of the RPA to increase radiotherapy availability and ameliorate global disparities in access to radiation oncology. RESULTS RPA tools will be offered through a webpage, where users can upload computed tomography data sets and download automatically generated contours and treatment plans. All interfaces have been designed to maximize ease of use and minimize risk. The current version of the RPA includes automated contouring and planning for head and neck cancer, cervical cancer, breast cancer, and metastases to the brain. CONCLUSION The RPA has been designed to bring high-quality treatment planning to more patients across the world, and it may encourage greater investment in treatment devices and other aspects of cancer treatment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laurence Court
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
| | - Ajay Aggarwal
- Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, London, United Kingdom
| | - Hester Burger
- Groote Schuur Hospital, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
| | | | - Christine Chung
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
| | - Raphael Douglas
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
| | - Monique du Toit
- Tygerberg Hospital, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa
| | - David Jaffray
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
| | - Anuja Jhingran
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
| | - Michael Mejia
- Benavides Cancer Institute, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines
| | - Raymond Mumme
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
| | | | - Komeela Naidoo
- Tygerberg Hospital, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa
| | | | - Kelly Nealon
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
| | | | | | - Niki Olanrewaju
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
| | - Jeannette Parkes
- Groote Schuur Hospital, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
| | - Willie Shaw
- University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
| | | | - Melody Xu
- University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
| | - Jinzhong Yang
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
| | - Lifei Zhang
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX
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19
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Paudyal R, Shah AD, Akin O, Do RKG, Konar AS, Hatzoglou V, Mahmood U, Lee N, Wong RJ, Banerjee S, Shin J, Veeraraghavan H, Shukla-Dave A. Artificial Intelligence in CT and MR Imaging for Oncological Applications. Cancers (Basel) 2023; 15:cancers15092573. [PMID: 37174039 PMCID: PMC10177423 DOI: 10.3390/cancers15092573] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2023] [Revised: 04/13/2023] [Accepted: 04/17/2023] [Indexed: 05/15/2023] Open
Abstract
Cancer care increasingly relies on imaging for patient management. The two most common cross-sectional imaging modalities in oncology are computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which provide high-resolution anatomic and physiological imaging. Herewith is a summary of recent applications of rapidly advancing artificial intelligence (AI) in CT and MRI oncological imaging that addresses the benefits and challenges of the resultant opportunities with examples. Major challenges remain, such as how best to integrate AI developments into clinical radiology practice, the vigorous assessment of quantitative CT and MR imaging data accuracy, and reliability for clinical utility and research integrity in oncology. Such challenges necessitate an evaluation of the robustness of imaging biomarkers to be included in AI developments, a culture of data sharing, and the cooperation of knowledgeable academics with vendor scientists and companies operating in radiology and oncology fields. Herein, we will illustrate a few challenges and solutions of these efforts using novel methods for synthesizing different contrast modality images, auto-segmentation, and image reconstruction with examples from lung CT as well as abdome, pelvis, and head and neck MRI. The imaging community must embrace the need for quantitative CT and MRI metrics beyond lesion size measurement. AI methods for the extraction and longitudinal tracking of imaging metrics from registered lesions and understanding the tumor environment will be invaluable for interpreting disease status and treatment efficacy. This is an exciting time to work together to move the imaging field forward with narrow AI-specific tasks. New AI developments using CT and MRI datasets will be used to improve the personalized management of cancer patients.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ramesh Paudyal
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, NY 10065, USA
| | - Akash D Shah
- Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, NY 10065, USA
| | - Oguz Akin
- Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, NY 10065, USA
| | - Richard K G Do
- Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, NY 10065, USA
| | - Amaresha Shridhar Konar
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, NY 10065, USA
| | - Vaios Hatzoglou
- Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, NY 10065, USA
| | - Usman Mahmood
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, NY 10065, USA
| | - Nancy Lee
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, NY 10065, USA
| | - Richard J Wong
- Head and Neck Service, Department of Surgery, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, NY 10065, USA
| | | | | | - Harini Veeraraghavan
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, NY 10065, USA
| | - Amita Shukla-Dave
- Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, NY 10065, USA
- Department of Radiology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, NY 10065, USA
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20
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Luo X, Liao W, He Y, Tang F, Wu M, Shen Y, Huang H, Song T, Li K, Zhang S, Zhang S, Wang G. Deep learning-based accurate delineation of primary gross tumor volume of nasopharyngeal carcinoma on heterogeneous magnetic resonance imaging: A large-scale and multi-center study. Radiother Oncol 2023; 180:109480. [PMID: 36657723 DOI: 10.1016/j.radonc.2023.109480] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/23/2022] [Revised: 01/07/2023] [Accepted: 01/08/2023] [Indexed: 01/18/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The problem of obtaining accurate primary gross tumor volume (GTVp) segmentation for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) on heterogeneous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images with deep learning remains unsolved. Herein, we reported a new deep-learning method than can accurately delineate GTVp for NPC on multi-center MRI scans. MATERIAL AND METHODS We collected 1057 patients with MRI images from five hospitals and randomly selected 600 patients from three hospitals to constitute a mixed training cohort for model development. The resting patients were used as internal (n = 259) and external (n = 198) testing cohorts for model evaluation. An augmentation-invariant strategy was proposed to delineate GTVp from multi-center MRI images, which encouraged networks to produce similar predictions for inputs with different augmentations to learn invariant anatomical structure features. The Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), 95 % Hausdorff distance (HD95), average surface distance (ASD), and relative absolute volume difference (RAVD) were used to measure segmentation performance. RESULTS The model-generated predictions had a high overlap ratio with the ground truth. For the internal testing cohorts, the average DSC, HD95, ASD, and RAVD were 0.88, 4.99 mm, 1.03 mm, and 0.13, respectively. For external testing cohorts, the average DSC, HD95, ASD, and RAVD were 0.88, 3.97 mm, 0.97 mm, and 0.10, respectively. No significant differences were found in DSC, HD95, and ASD for patients with different T categories, MRI thickness, or in-plane spacings. Moreover, the proposed augmentation-invariant strategy outperformed the widely-used nnUNet, which uses conventional data augmentation approaches. CONCLUSION Our proposed method showed a highly accurate GTVp segmentation for NPC on multi-center MRI images, suggesting that it has the potential to act as a generalized delineation solution for heterogeneous MRI images.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiangde Luo
- University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China; Shanghai AI Laboratory, Shanghai 200030, China
| | - Wenjun Liao
- University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China; Department of Radiation Oncology, Sichuan Cancer Hospital & Institute, Sichuan Cancer Center, School of Medicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610041, China.
| | - Yuan He
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 23000, China
| | - Fan Tang
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China
| | - Mengwan Wu
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Sichuan Cancer Hospital & Institute, Sichuan Cancer Center, School of Medicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610041, China
| | - Yuanyuan Shen
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Sichuan Cancer Hospital & Institute, Sichuan Cancer Center, School of Medicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610041, China
| | - Hui Huang
- Cancer center, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610072, China
| | - Tao Song
- SenseTime Research, Shanghai 200233, China
| | - Kang Li
- West China Biomedical Big Data Center, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China
| | - Shichuan Zhang
- University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China; Department of Radiation Oncology, Sichuan Cancer Hospital & Institute, Sichuan Cancer Center, School of Medicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610041, China
| | - Shaoting Zhang
- University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China; Shanghai AI Laboratory, Shanghai 200030, China
| | - Guotai Wang
- University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China; Shanghai AI Laboratory, Shanghai 200030, China.
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21
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Shen J, Gu P, Wang Y, Wang Z. Advances in automatic delineation of target volume and cardiac substructure in breast cancer radiotherapy (Review). Oncol Lett 2023; 25:110. [PMID: 36817059 PMCID: PMC9932716 DOI: 10.3892/ol.2023.13697] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/14/2022] [Accepted: 01/06/2023] [Indexed: 02/05/2023] Open
Abstract
Postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy plays an important role in the treatment of patients with breast cancer. With the continuous development of radiotherapeutic technologies, the requirements for radiotherapeutic accuracy are increasingly high. The accuracy of target volume and organ at risk delineation significantly affects the effect of radiotherapy. Automatic delineation software has been continuously developed for the automatic delineation of target areas and organs at risk. Automatic segmentation based on an atlas and deep learning is a hot topic in current clinical research. Automatic delineation can not only reduce the workload and delineation times, but also establish a uniform delineation standard and reduce inter-observer and intra-observer differences. In patients with breast cancer, especially in patients who undergo left breast radiotherapy, the protection of the heart is particularly important. Treating the whole heart as an organ at risk cannot meet the clinical needs, and it is necessary to limit the dose to specific cardiac substructures. The present review discusses the importance of automatic delineation of target volume and cardiac substructure in radiotherapy for patients with breast cancer.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jingjing Shen
- School of Health Science and Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200438, P.R. China
| | - Peihua Gu
- Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy, Shidong Hospital Affiliated to University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200438, P.R. China
| | - Yun Wang
- Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy, Shidong Hospital Affiliated to University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200438, P.R. China
| | - Zhongming Wang
- Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy, Shidong Hospital Affiliated to University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200438, P.R. China,Correspondence to: Dr Zhongming Wang, Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy, Shidong Hospital Affiliated to University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, 999 Shiguang Road, Shanghai 200438, P.R. China, E-mail:
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22
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Mackay K, Bernstein D, Glocker B, Kamnitsas K, Taylor A. A Review of the Metrics Used to Assess Auto-Contouring Systems in Radiotherapy. Clin Oncol (R Coll Radiol) 2023; 35:354-369. [PMID: 36803407 DOI: 10.1016/j.clon.2023.01.016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/25/2022] [Revised: 12/05/2022] [Accepted: 01/23/2023] [Indexed: 02/01/2023]
Abstract
Auto-contouring could revolutionise future planning of radiotherapy treatment. The lack of consensus on how to assess and validate auto-contouring systems currently limits clinical use. This review formally quantifies the assessment metrics used in studies published during one calendar year and assesses the need for standardised practice. A PubMed literature search was undertaken for papers evaluating radiotherapy auto-contouring published during 2021. Papers were assessed for types of metric and the methodology used to generate ground-truth comparators. Our PubMed search identified 212 studies, of which 117 met the criteria for clinical review. Geometric assessment metrics were used in 116 of 117 studies (99.1%). This includes the Dice Similarity Coefficient used in 113 (96.6%) studies. Clinically relevant metrics, such as qualitative, dosimetric and time-saving metrics, were less frequently used in 22 (18.8%), 27 (23.1%) and 18 (15.4%) of 117 studies, respectively. There was heterogeneity within each category of metric. Over 90 different names for geometric measures were used. Methods for qualitative assessment were different in all but two papers. Variation existed in the methods used to generate radiotherapy plans for dosimetric assessment. Consideration of editing time was only given in 11 (9.4%) papers. A single manual contour as a ground-truth comparator was used in 65 (55.6%) studies. Only 31 (26.5%) studies compared auto-contours to usual inter- and/or intra-observer variation. In conclusion, significant variation exists in how research papers currently assess the accuracy of automatically generated contours. Geometric measures are the most popular, however their clinical utility is unknown. There is heterogeneity in the methods used to perform clinical assessment. Considering the different stages of system implementation may provide a framework to decide the most appropriate metrics. This analysis supports the need for a consensus on the clinical implementation of auto-contouring.
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Affiliation(s)
- K Mackay
- The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK; The Royal Marsden Hospital, London, UK.
| | - D Bernstein
- The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK; The Royal Marsden Hospital, London, UK
| | - B Glocker
- Department of Computing, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, UK
| | - K Kamnitsas
- Department of Computing, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, UK; Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - A Taylor
- The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK; The Royal Marsden Hospital, London, UK
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23
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Weissmann T, Huang Y, Fischer S, Roesch J, Mansoorian S, Ayala Gaona H, Gostian AO, Hecht M, Lettmaier S, Deloch L, Frey B, Gaipl US, Distel LV, Maier A, Iro H, Semrau S, Bert C, Fietkau R, Putz F. Deep learning for automatic head and neck lymph node level delineation provides expert-level accuracy. Front Oncol 2023; 13:1115258. [PMID: 36874135 PMCID: PMC9978473 DOI: 10.3389/fonc.2023.1115258] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/03/2022] [Accepted: 01/30/2023] [Indexed: 02/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Background Deep learning-based head and neck lymph node level (HN_LNL) autodelineation is of high relevance to radiotherapy research and clinical treatment planning but still underinvestigated in academic literature. In particular, there is no publicly available open-source solution for large-scale autosegmentation of HN_LNL in the research setting. Methods An expert-delineated cohort of 35 planning CTs was used for training of an nnU-net 3D-fullres/2D-ensemble model for autosegmentation of 20 different HN_LNL. A second cohort acquired at the same institution later in time served as the test set (n = 20). In a completely blinded evaluation, 3 clinical experts rated the quality of deep learning autosegmentations in a head-to-head comparison with expert-created contours. For a subgroup of 10 cases, intraobserver variability was compared to the average deep learning autosegmentation accuracy on the original and recontoured set of expert segmentations. A postprocessing step to adjust craniocaudal boundaries of level autosegmentations to the CT slice plane was introduced and the effect of autocontour consistency with CT slice plane orientation on geometric accuracy and expert rating was investigated. Results Blinded expert ratings for deep learning segmentations and expert-created contours were not significantly different. Deep learning segmentations with slice plane adjustment were rated numerically higher (mean, 81.0 vs. 79.6, p = 0.185) and deep learning segmentations without slice plane adjustment were rated numerically lower (77.2 vs. 79.6, p = 0.167) than manually drawn contours. In a head-to-head comparison, deep learning segmentations with CT slice plane adjustment were rated significantly better than deep learning contours without slice plane adjustment (81.0 vs. 77.2, p = 0.004). Geometric accuracy of deep learning segmentations was not different from intraobserver variability (mean Dice per level, 0.76 vs. 0.77, p = 0.307). Clinical significance of contour consistency with CT slice plane orientation was not represented by geometric accuracy metrics (volumetric Dice, 0.78 vs. 0.78, p = 0.703). Conclusions We show that a nnU-net 3D-fullres/2D-ensemble model can be used for highly accurate autodelineation of HN_LNL using only a limited training dataset that is ideally suited for large-scale standardized autodelineation of HN_LNL in the research setting. Geometric accuracy metrics are only an imperfect surrogate for blinded expert rating.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas Weissmann
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
| | - Yixing Huang
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
| | - Stefan Fischer
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
| | - Johannes Roesch
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
| | - Sina Mansoorian
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
| | - Horacio Ayala Gaona
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
| | - Antoniu-Oreste Gostian
- Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany.,Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Markus Hecht
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
| | - Sebastian Lettmaier
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
| | - Lisa Deloch
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany.,Translational Radiobiology, Department of Radiation Oncology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Benjamin Frey
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany.,Translational Radiobiology, Department of Radiation Oncology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Udo S Gaipl
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany.,Translational Radiobiology, Department of Radiation Oncology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Luitpold Valentin Distel
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
| | - Andreas Maier
- Pattern Recognition Lab, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Heinrich Iro
- Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany.,Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Sabine Semrau
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
| | - Christoph Bert
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
| | - Rainer Fietkau
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
| | - Florian Putz
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.,Comprehensive Cancer Center Erlangen-EMN (CCC ER-EMN), Erlangen, Germany
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Current Radiotherapy Considerations for Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma. Cancers (Basel) 2022; 14:cancers14235773. [PMID: 36497254 PMCID: PMC9736118 DOI: 10.3390/cancers14235773] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/26/2022] [Revised: 11/21/2022] [Accepted: 11/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Radiotherapy is the primary treatment modality for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Successful curative treatment requires optimal radiotherapy planning and precise beam delivery that maximizes locoregional control while minimizing treatment-related side effects. In this article, we highlight considerations in target delineation, radiation dose, and the adoption of technological advances with the aim of optimizing the benefits of radiotherapy in NPC patients.
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Strijbis VIJ, Dahele M, Gurney-Champion OJ, Blom GJ, Vergeer MR, Slotman BJ, Verbakel WFAR. Deep Learning for Automated Elective Lymph Node Level Segmentation for Head and Neck Cancer Radiotherapy. Cancers (Basel) 2022; 14:cancers14225501. [PMID: 36428593 PMCID: PMC9688342 DOI: 10.3390/cancers14225501] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2022] [Revised: 10/31/2022] [Accepted: 11/07/2022] [Indexed: 11/11/2022] Open
Abstract
Depending on the clinical situation, different combinations of lymph node (LN) levels define the elective LN target volume in head-and-neck cancer (HNC) radiotherapy. The accurate auto-contouring of individual LN levels could reduce the burden and variability of manual segmentation and be used regardless of the primary tumor location. We evaluated three deep learning approaches for the segmenting individual LN levels I−V, which were manually contoured on CT scans from 70 HNC patients. The networks were trained and evaluated using five-fold cross-validation and ensemble learning for 60 patients with (1) 3D patch-based UNets, (2) multi-view (MV) voxel classification networks and (3) sequential UNet+MV. The performances were evaluated using Dice similarity coefficients (DSC) for automated and manual segmentations for individual levels, and the planning target volumes were extrapolated from the combined levels I−V and II−IV, both for the cross-validation and for an independent test set of 10 patients. The median DSC were 0.80, 0.66 and 0.82 for UNet, MV and UNet+MV, respectively. Overall, UNet+MV significantly (p < 0.0001) outperformed other arrangements and yielded DSC = 0.87, 0.85, 0.86, 0.82, 0.77, 0.77 for the combined and individual level I−V structures, respectively. Both PTVs were also significantly (p < 0.0001) more accurate with UNet+MV, with DSC = 0.91 and 0.90, respectively. The accurate segmentation of individual LN levels I−V can be achieved using an ensemble of UNets. UNet+MV can further refine this result.
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Affiliation(s)
- Victor I. J. Strijbis
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Amsterdam UMC Location Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1117, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Cancer Center Amsterdam, Cancer Treatment and Quality of Life, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Correspondence: ; Tel.: +31-6-54-32-64-03
| | - Max Dahele
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Amsterdam UMC Location Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1117, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Cancer Center Amsterdam, Cancer Treatment and Quality of Life, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Oliver J. Gurney-Champion
- Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Amsterdam UMC Location University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Cancer Center Amsterdam, Imaging and Biomarkers, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Gerrit J. Blom
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Amsterdam UMC Location Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1117, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Marije R. Vergeer
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Amsterdam UMC Location Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1117, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Berend J. Slotman
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Amsterdam UMC Location Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1117, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Cancer Center Amsterdam, Cancer Treatment and Quality of Life, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Wilko F. A. R. Verbakel
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Amsterdam UMC Location Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1117, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Cancer Center Amsterdam, Cancer Treatment and Quality of Life, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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26
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Savjani RR, Lauria M, Bose S, Deng J, Yuan Y, Andrearczyk V. Automated Tumor Segmentation in Radiotherapy. Semin Radiat Oncol 2022; 32:319-329. [DOI: 10.1016/j.semradonc.2022.06.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022]
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27
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Taku N, Wahid KA, van Dijk LV, Sahlsten J, Jaskari J, Kaski K, Fuller CD, Naser MA. Auto-detection and segmentation of involved lymph nodes in HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancer using a convolutional deep learning neural network. Clin Transl Radiat Oncol 2022; 36:47-55. [PMID: 35782963 PMCID: PMC9240370 DOI: 10.1016/j.ctro.2022.06.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/10/2022] [Revised: 06/09/2022] [Accepted: 06/16/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Patients diagnosed with HPV-associated OPC are often found to have clinical evidence of lymph node involvement at the time of diagnosis. Manual segmentation of radiographically involved lymph nodes is an integral part of treatment planning for those patients dispositioned to definitive radiotherapy. We present a deep learning, convolutional neural network that can be used to automate the process of lymph node detection and segmentation and with potential to increase the efficiency to the radiotherapy workflow.
Purpose Segmentation of involved lymph nodes on head and neck computed tomography (HN-CT) scans is necessary for the radiotherapy planning of early-stage human papilloma virus (HPV) associated oropharynx cancers (OPC). We aimed to train a deep learning convolutional neural network (DL-CNN) to segment involved lymph nodes on HN-CT scans. Methods Ground-truth segmentation of involved nodes was performed on pre-surgical HN-CT scans for 90 patients who underwent levels II-IV neck dissection for node-positive HPV-OPC (training/validation [n = 70] and testing [n = 20]). A 5-fold cross validation approach was used to train 5 DL-CNN sub-models based on a residual U-net architecture. Validation and testing segmentation masks were compared to ground-truth masks using predetermined metrics. A lymph auto-detection model to discriminate between “node-positive” and “node-negative” HN-CT scans was developed by thresholding segmentation model outputs and evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). Results In the DL-CNN validation phase, all sub-models yielded segmentation masks with median Dice ≥ 0.90 and median volume similarity score of ≥ 0.95. In the testing phase, the DL-CNN produced consensus segmentation masks with median Dice of 0.92 (IQR, 0.89–0.95), median volume similarity of 0.97 (IQR, 0.94–0.99), and median Hausdorff distance of 4.52 mm (IQR, 1.22–8.38). The detection model achieved an AUC of 0.98. Conclusion The results from this single-institution study demonstrate the successful automation of lymph node segmentation for patients with HPV-OPC using a DL-CNN. Future studies, including validation with an external dataset, are necessary to clarify its role in the larger radiation oncology treatment planning workflow.
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Nealon KA, Court LE, Douglas RJ, Zhang L, Han EY. Development and validation of a checklist for use with automatically generated radiotherapy plans. J Appl Clin Med Phys 2022; 23:e13694. [PMID: 35775105 PMCID: PMC9512344 DOI: 10.1002/acm2.13694] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/14/2022] [Revised: 05/19/2022] [Accepted: 05/24/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Purpose To develop a checklist that improves the rate of error detection during the plan review of automatically generated radiotherapy plans. Methods A custom checklist was developed using guidance from American Association of Physicists in Medicine task groups 275 and 315 and the results of a failure modes and effects analysis of the Radiation Planning Assistant (RPA), an automated contouring and treatment planning tool. The preliminary checklist contained 90 review items for each automatically generated plan. In the first study, eight physicists were recruited from our institution who were familiar with the RPA. Each physicist reviewed 10 artificial intelligence‐generated resident treatment plans from the RPA for safety and plan quality, five of which contained errors. Physicists performed plan checks, recorded errors, and rated each plan's clinical acceptability. Following a 2‐week break, physicists reviewed 10 additional plans with a similar distribution of errors using our customized checklist. Participants then provided feedback on the usability of the checklist and it was modified accordingly. In a second study, this process was repeated with 14 senior medical physics residents who were randomly assigned to checklist or no checklist for their reviews. Each reviewed 10 plans, five of which contained errors, and completed the corresponding survey. Results In the first study, the checklist significantly improved the rate of error detection from 3.4 ± 1.1 to 4.4 ± 0.74 errors per participant without and with the checklist, respectively (p = 0.02). Error detection increased by 20% when the custom checklist was utilized. In the second study, 2.9 ± 0.84 and 3.5 ± 0.84 errors per participant were detected without and with the revised checklist, respectively (p = 0.08). Despite the lack of statistical significance for this cohort, error detection increased by 18% when the checklist was utilized. Conclusion Our results indicate that the use of a customized checklist when reviewing automated treatment plans will result in improved patient safety.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kelly A Nealon
- University of Texas MD Anderson UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas, USA.,Department of Radiation Physics - Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Laurence E Court
- University of Texas MD Anderson UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas, USA.,Department of Radiation Physics - Patient Care, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Raphael J Douglas
- Department of Radiation Physics - Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Lifei Zhang
- Department of Radiation Physics - Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Eun Young Han
- University of Texas MD Anderson UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas, USA.,Department of Radiation Physics - Patient Care, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
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A Survey on Deep Learning for Precision Oncology. Diagnostics (Basel) 2022; 12:diagnostics12061489. [PMID: 35741298 PMCID: PMC9222056 DOI: 10.3390/diagnostics12061489] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/25/2022] [Revised: 06/14/2022] [Accepted: 06/14/2022] [Indexed: 12/27/2022] Open
Abstract
Precision oncology, which ensures optimized cancer treatment tailored to the unique biology of a patient’s disease, has rapidly developed and is of great clinical importance. Deep learning has become the main method for precision oncology. This paper summarizes the recent deep-learning approaches relevant to precision oncology and reviews over 150 articles within the last six years. First, we survey the deep-learning approaches categorized by various precision oncology tasks, including the estimation of dose distribution for treatment planning, survival analysis and risk estimation after treatment, prediction of treatment response, and patient selection for treatment planning. Secondly, we provide an overview of the studies per anatomical area, including the brain, bladder, breast, bone, cervix, esophagus, gastric, head and neck, kidneys, liver, lung, pancreas, pelvis, prostate, and rectum. Finally, we highlight the challenges and discuss potential solutions for future research directions.
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Barragán-Montero A, Bibal A, Dastarac MH, Draguet C, Valdés G, Nguyen D, Willems S, Vandewinckele L, Holmström M, Löfman F, Souris K, Sterpin E, Lee JA. Towards a safe and efficient clinical implementation of machine learning in radiation oncology by exploring model interpretability, explainability and data-model dependency. Phys Med Biol 2022; 67:10.1088/1361-6560/ac678a. [PMID: 35421855 PMCID: PMC9870296 DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/ac678a] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/30/2021] [Accepted: 04/14/2022] [Indexed: 01/26/2023]
Abstract
The interest in machine learning (ML) has grown tremendously in recent years, partly due to the performance leap that occurred with new techniques of deep learning, convolutional neural networks for images, increased computational power, and wider availability of large datasets. Most fields of medicine follow that popular trend and, notably, radiation oncology is one of those that are at the forefront, with already a long tradition in using digital images and fully computerized workflows. ML models are driven by data, and in contrast with many statistical or physical models, they can be very large and complex, with countless generic parameters. This inevitably raises two questions, namely, the tight dependence between the models and the datasets that feed them, and the interpretability of the models, which scales with its complexity. Any problems in the data used to train the model will be later reflected in their performance. This, together with the low interpretability of ML models, makes their implementation into the clinical workflow particularly difficult. Building tools for risk assessment and quality assurance of ML models must involve then two main points: interpretability and data-model dependency. After a joint introduction of both radiation oncology and ML, this paper reviews the main risks and current solutions when applying the latter to workflows in the former. Risks associated with data and models, as well as their interaction, are detailed. Next, the core concepts of interpretability, explainability, and data-model dependency are formally defined and illustrated with examples. Afterwards, a broad discussion goes through key applications of ML in workflows of radiation oncology as well as vendors' perspectives for the clinical implementation of ML.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ana Barragán-Montero
- Molecular Imaging, Radiation and Oncology (MIRO) Laboratory, Institut de Recherche Expérimentale et Clinique (IREC), UCLouvain, Belgium
| | - Adrien Bibal
- PReCISE, NaDI Institute, Faculty of Computer Science, UNamur and CENTAL, ILC, UCLouvain, Belgium
| | - Margerie Huet Dastarac
- Molecular Imaging, Radiation and Oncology (MIRO) Laboratory, Institut de Recherche Expérimentale et Clinique (IREC), UCLouvain, Belgium
| | - Camille Draguet
- Molecular Imaging, Radiation and Oncology (MIRO) Laboratory, Institut de Recherche Expérimentale et Clinique (IREC), UCLouvain, Belgium
- Department of Oncology, Laboratory of Experimental Radiotherapy, KU Leuven, Belgium
| | - Gilmer Valdés
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco, United States of America
| | - Dan Nguyen
- Medical Artificial Intelligence and Automation (MAIA) Laboratory, Department of Radiation Oncology, UT Southwestern Medical Center, United States of America
| | - Siri Willems
- ESAT/PSI, KU Leuven Belgium & MIRC, UZ Leuven, Belgium
| | | | | | | | - Kevin Souris
- Molecular Imaging, Radiation and Oncology (MIRO) Laboratory, Institut de Recherche Expérimentale et Clinique (IREC), UCLouvain, Belgium
| | - Edmond Sterpin
- Molecular Imaging, Radiation and Oncology (MIRO) Laboratory, Institut de Recherche Expérimentale et Clinique (IREC), UCLouvain, Belgium
- Department of Oncology, Laboratory of Experimental Radiotherapy, KU Leuven, Belgium
| | - John A Lee
- Molecular Imaging, Radiation and Oncology (MIRO) Laboratory, Institut de Recherche Expérimentale et Clinique (IREC), UCLouvain, Belgium
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Cao W, Gronberg M, Olanrewaju A, Whitaker T, Hoffman K, Cardenas C, Garden A, Skinner H, Beadle B, Court L. Knowledge-based planning for the radiation therapy treatment plan quality assurance for patients with head and neck cancer. J Appl Clin Med Phys 2022; 23:e13614. [PMID: 35488508 PMCID: PMC9195018 DOI: 10.1002/acm2.13614] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/30/2021] [Revised: 03/11/2022] [Accepted: 03/28/2022] [Indexed: 01/09/2023] Open
Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of using a knowledge‐based planning technique to detect poor quality VMAT plans for patients with head and neck cancer. We created two dose–volume histogram (DVH) prediction models using a commercial knowledge‐based planning system (RapidPlan, Varian Medical Systems, Palo Alto, CA) from plans generated by manual planning (MP) and automated planning (AP) approaches. DVHs were predicted for evaluation cohort 1 (EC1) of 25 patients and compared with achieved DVHs of MP and AP plans to evaluate prediction accuracy. Additionally, we predicted DVHs for evaluation cohort 2 (EC2) of 25 patients for which we intentionally generated plans with suboptimal normal tissue sparing while satisfying dose–volume limits of standard practice. Three radiation oncologists reviewed these plans without seeing the DVH predictions. We found that predicted DVH ranges (upper–lower predictions) were consistently wider for the MP model than for the AP model for all normal structures. The average ranges of mean dose predictions among all structures was 9.7 Gy (MP model) and 3.4 Gy (AP model) for EC1 patients. RapidPlan models identified 7 MP plans as outliers according to mean dose or D1% for at least one structure, while none of AP plans were flagged. For EC2 patients, 22 suboptimal plans were identified by prediction. While re‐generated AP plans validated that these suboptimal plans could be improved, 40 out of 45 structures with predicted poor sparing were also identified by oncologist reviews as requiring additional planning to improve sparing in the clinical setting. Our study shows that knowledge‐based DVH prediction models can be sufficiently accurate for plan quality assurance purposes. A prediction model built by a small cohort automatically‐generated plans was effective in detecting suboptimal plans. Such tools have potential to assist the plan quality assurance workflow for individual patients in the clinic.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wenhua Cao
- Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Mary Gronberg
- Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.,UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Adenike Olanrewaju
- Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Thomas Whitaker
- Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Karen Hoffman
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Carlos Cardenas
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA
| | - Adam Garden
- Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Heath Skinner
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Beth Beadle
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Laurence Court
- Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
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Borderías-Villarroel E, Taasti V, Van Elmpt W, Teruel-Rivas S, Geets X, Sterpin E. Evaluation of the clinical value of automatic online dose restoration for adaptive proton therapy of head and neck cancer. Radiother Oncol 2022; 170:190-197. [PMID: 35346754 DOI: 10.1016/j.radonc.2022.03.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/28/2021] [Revised: 03/21/2022] [Accepted: 03/21/2022] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
Abstract
INTRODUCTION Intensity modulated proton therapy (IMPT) is highly sensitive to anatomical variations which can cause inadequate target coverage during treatment. This study compares not-adapted (NA) robust plans to two adaptive IMPT methods - a fully-offline adaptive (FOA) and a simplified automatic online adaptive strategy (dose restoration (DR)) to determine the benefit of DR, in head and neck cancer (HNC). MATERIAL/METHODS Robustly optimized clinical IMPT doses in planning-CTs (pCTs) were available for a cohort of 10 HNC patients. During robust re-optimization, DR used isodose contours, generated from the clinical dose on pCTs, and patient specific objectives to reproduce the clinical dose in every repeated-CT(rCT). For each rCT(n=50), NA, DR and FOA plans were robustly evaluated. RESULTS An improvement in DVH-metrics and robustness was seen for DR and FOA plans compared to NA plans. For NA plans, 74%(37/50) of rCTs did not fulfill the CTV coverage criteria (D98%>95%Dprescription). DR improved target coverage, target homogeneity and variability on critical risk organs such as the spinal cord. After DR, 52%(26/50) of rCTs met all clinical goals. Because of large anatomical changes and/or inaccurate patient repositioning, 48%(24/50) of rCTs still needed full offline adaptation to ensure an optimal treatment since dose restoration was not able to re-establish the initial plan quality. CONCLUSION Robust optimization together with fully-automatized DR avoided offline adaptation in 52% of the cases. Implementation of dose restoration in clinical routine could ensure treatment plan optimality while saving valuable human and material resources to radiotherapy departments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elena Borderías-Villarroel
- Molecular Imaging, Radiotherapy and Oncology (MIRO), UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium. Avenue Hippocrate 54, Bte B1.54.07, 1200 Brussels, (Belgium).
| | - Vicki Taasti
- Department of Radiation Oncology (MAASTRO), GROW - School for Oncology, Maastricht University Medical Centre+, Doctor Tanslaan 12, 6229 ET Maastricht, (Netherlands).
| | - Wouter Van Elmpt
- Department of Radiation Oncology (MAASTRO), GROW - School for Oncology, Maastricht University Medical Centre+, Doctor Tanslaan 12, 6229 ET Maastricht, (Netherlands).
| | - S Teruel-Rivas
- Molecular Imaging, Radiotherapy and Oncology (MIRO), UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium. Avenue Hippocrate 54, Bte B1.54.07, 1200 Brussels, (Belgium)
| | - X Geets
- Molecular Imaging, Radiotherapy and Oncology (MIRO), UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium. Avenue Hippocrate 54, Bte B1.54.07, 1200 Brussels, (Belgium); Department of Radiation Oncology, Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc, Brussels, Belgium. Avenue Hippocrate 10, 1200 Brussels, (Belgium).
| | - E Sterpin
- Molecular Imaging, Radiotherapy and Oncology (MIRO), UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium. Avenue Hippocrate 54, Bte B1.54.07, 1200 Brussels, (Belgium); Department of Oncology, Laboratory of Experimental Radiotherapy, KULeuven, Herestraat 49, 3000 Leuven, (Belgium).
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Nealon KA, Balter PA, Douglas RJ, Fullen DK, Nitsch PL, Olanrewaju AM, Soliman M, Court LE. Using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis to Evaluate Risk in the Clinical Adoption of Automated Contouring and Treatment Planning Tools. Pract Radiat Oncol 2022; 12:e344-e353. [DOI: 10.1016/j.prro.2022.01.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/07/2021] [Revised: 12/09/2021] [Accepted: 01/07/2022] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
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Lin H, Xiao H, Dong L, Teo KBK, Zou W, Cai J, Li T. Deep learning for automatic target volume segmentation in radiation therapy: a review. Quant Imaging Med Surg 2021; 11:4847-4858. [PMID: 34888194 PMCID: PMC8611469 DOI: 10.21037/qims-21-168] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/09/2021] [Accepted: 09/16/2021] [Indexed: 12/21/2022]
Abstract
Deep learning, a new branch of machine learning algorithm, has emerged as a fast growing trend in medical imaging and become the state-of-the-art method in various clinical applications such as Radiology, Histo-pathology and Radiation Oncology. Specifically in radiation oncology, deep learning has shown its power in performing automatic segmentation tasks in radiation therapy for Organs-At-Risks (OAR), given its potential in improving the efficiency of OAR contouring and reducing the inter- and intra-observer variabilities. The similar interests were shared for target volume segmentation, an essential step of radiation therapy treatment planning, where the gross tumor volume is defined and microscopic spread is encompassed. The deep learning-based automatic segmentation method has recently been expanded into target volume automatic segmentation. In this paper, the authors summarized the major deep learning architectures of supervised learning fashion related to target volume segmentation, reviewed the mechanism of each infrastructure, surveyed the use of these models in various imaging domains (including Computational Tomography with and without contrast, Magnetic Resonant Imaging and Positron Emission Tomography) and multiple clinical sites, and compared the performance of different models using standard geometric evaluation metrics. The paper concluded with a discussion of open challenges and potential paths of future research in target volume automatic segmentation and how it may benefit the clinical practice.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hui Lin
- Department of Radaition Oncology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Department of Radiation Oncology, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Haonan Xiao
- Department of Health Technology & Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
| | - Lei Dong
- Department of Radaition Oncology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Kevin Boon-Keng Teo
- Department of Radaition Oncology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Wei Zou
- Department of Radaition Oncology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Jing Cai
- Department of Health Technology & Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
| | - Taoran Li
- Department of Radaition Oncology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
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Thor M, Iyer A, Jiang J, Apte A, Veeraraghavan H, Allgood NB, Kouri JA, Zhou Y, LoCastro E, Elguindi S, Hong L, Hunt M, Cerviño L, Aristophanous M, Zarepisheh M, Deasy JO. Deep learning auto-segmentation and automated treatment planning for trismus risk reduction in head and neck cancer radiotherapy. Phys Imaging Radiat Oncol 2021; 19:96-101. [PMID: 34746452 PMCID: PMC8552336 DOI: 10.1016/j.phro.2021.07.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/08/2021] [Revised: 07/15/2021] [Accepted: 07/16/2021] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Background and Purpose Reducing trismus in radiotherapy for head and neck cancer (HNC) is important. Automated deep learning (DL) segmentation and automated planning was used to introduce new and rarely segmented masticatory structures to study if trismus risk could be decreased. Materials and Methods Auto-segmentation was based on purpose-built DL, and automated planning used our in-house system, ECHO. Treatment plans for ten HNC patients, treated with 2 Gy × 35 fractions, were optimized (ECHO0). Six manually segmented OARs were replaced with DL auto-segmentations and the plans re-optimized (ECHO1). In a third set of plans, mean doses for auto-segmented ipsilateral masseter and medial pterygoid (MIMean, MPIMean), derived from a trismus risk model, were implemented as dose-volume objectives (ECHO2). Clinical dose-volume criteria were compared between the two scenarios (ECHO0vs. ECHO1; ECHO1vs. ECHO2; Wilcoxon signed-rank test; significance: p < 0.01). Results Small systematic differences were observed between the doses to the six auto-segmented OARs and their manual counterparts (median: ECHO1 = 6.2 (range: 0.4, 21) Gy vs. ECHO0 = 6.6 (range: 0.3, 22) Gy; p = 0.007), and the ECHO1 plans provided improved normal tissue sparing across a larger dose-volume range. Only in the ECHO2 plans, all patients fulfilled both MIMean and MPIMean criteria. The population median MIMean and MPIMean were considerably lower than those suggested by the trismus model (ECHO0: MIMean = 13 Gy vs. ≤42 Gy; MPIMean = 29 Gy vs. ≤68 Gy). Conclusions Automated treatment planning can efficiently incorporate new structures from DL auto-segmentation, which results in trismus risk sparing without deteriorating treatment plan quality. Auto-planning and deep learning auto-segmentation together provide a powerful platform to further improve treatment planning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Thor
- Corresponding author at: Dept. of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, 485 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10017, USA.
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Xie Y, Kang K, Wang Y, Khandekar MJ, Willers H, Keane FK, Bortfeld TR. Automated clinical target volume delineation using deep 3D neural networks in radiation therapy of Non-small Cell Lung Cancer. PHYSICS & IMAGING IN RADIATION ONCOLOGY 2021; 19:131-137. [PMID: 34485718 PMCID: PMC8397906 DOI: 10.1016/j.phro.2021.08.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/23/2021] [Revised: 08/02/2021] [Accepted: 08/11/2021] [Indexed: 12/25/2022]
Abstract
Background and purpose Clinical targeted volume (CTV) delineation accounting for the patient-specific microscopic tumor spread can be a difficult step in defining the treatment volume. We developed an intelligent and automated CTV delineation system for locally advanced non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) to cover the microscopic tumor spread while avoiding organs-at-risk (OAR). Materials and methods A 3D UNet with a customized loss function was used, which takes both the patients’ respiration-correlated (“4D”) CT scan and the physician contoured internal gross target volume (iGTV) as inputs, and outputs the CTV delineation. Among the 84 identified patients, 60 were randomly selected to train the network, and the remaining as testing. The model performance was evaluated and compared with cropped expansions using the shape similarities to the physicians’ contours (the ground-truth) and the avoidance of critical OARs. Results On the testing datasets, all model-predicted CTV contours followed closely to the ground truth, and were acceptable by physicians. The average dice score was 0.86. Our model-generated contours demonstrated better agreement with the ground-truth than the cropped 5 mm/8 mm expansion method (median of median surface distance of 1.0 mm vs 1.9 mm/2.0 mm), with a small overlap volume with OARs (0.4 cm3 for the esophagus and 1.2 cm3 for the heart). Conclusions The CTVs generated by our CTV delineation system agree with the physician's contours. This approach demonstrates the capability of intelligent volumetric expansions with the potential to be used in clinical practice.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yunhe Xie
- Division of Radiation Biophysics, Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Kongbin Kang
- Department of Research and Development, Bio-Tree system, Inc., Providence, RI, United States
| | - Yi Wang
- Division of Radiation Biophysics, Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Melin J Khandekar
- Division of Radiation Biophysics, Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Henning Willers
- Division of Radiation Biophysics, Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Florence K Keane
- Division of Radiation Biophysics, Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Thomas R Bortfeld
- Division of Radiation Biophysics, Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
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Gronberg MP, Gay SS, Netherton TJ, Rhee DJ, Court LE, Cardenas CE. Technical Note: Dose prediction for head and neck radiotherapy using a three-dimensional dense dilated U-net architecture. Med Phys 2021; 48:5567-5573. [PMID: 34157138 DOI: 10.1002/mp.14827] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 12.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/24/2020] [Revised: 01/17/2021] [Accepted: 02/24/2021] [Indexed: 12/31/2022] Open
Abstract
PURPOSE Radiation therapy treatment planning is a time-consuming and iterative manual process. Consequently, plan quality varies greatly between and within institutions. Artificial intelligence shows great promise in improving plan quality and reducing planning times. This technical note describes our participation in the American Association of Physicists in Medicine Open Knowledge-Based Planning Challenge (OpenKBP), a competition to accurately predict radiation therapy dose distributions. METHODS A three-dimensional (3D) densely connected U-Net with dilated convolutions was developed to predict 3D dose distributions given contoured CT images of head and neck patients as input. While traditional augmentation techniques such as rotations and translations were explored, it was found that training on random patches alone resulted in the greatest model performance. A custom-weighted mean squared error loss function was employed. Finally, an ensemble of best-performing networks was used to generate the final challenge predictions. RESULTS Our team (SuperPod) placed second in the dose stream of the OpenKBP challenge. The average mean absolute difference between the predicted and clinical dose distributions of the testing dataset was 2.56 Gy. On average, the predicted normalized target DVH metrics were within 3% of the clinical plans, and the predicted organ at risk DVH metrics were within 2 Gy of the clinical plans. CONCLUSIONS The developed 3D dense dilated U-Net architecture can accurately predict 3D radiotherapy dose distributions and can be used as part of a fully automated radiation therapy planning pipeline.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mary P Gronberg
- Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.,The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Skylar S Gay
- Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Tucker J Netherton
- Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.,The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Dong Joo Rhee
- Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.,The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Laurence E Court
- Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.,The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Carlos E Cardenas
- Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA.,The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas, USA
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