ABSTRACT
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: The purpose of this study was to assess the potential for improvement of routine breast and organs at risk contouring in patients treated in the lateral decubitus position using Workflow Box™ (Mirada Medical™, UK) automatic contouring software. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Automatic contouring of the breast by this software is currently based on an atlas created from isodoses representing 95% of the prescribed dose in a population of patients previously treated at institut Curie. Forty cases of breast cancer (20 right breasts and 20 left breasts) were contoured by three radiation oncologists specialized in breast cancer, allowing the creation of a new atlas in the automatic contouring software. This study assessed the quality of contouring in 20 patients (ten right breasts and ten left breasts) by comparing manual contouring performed by the expert radiation oncologists (reference) with those generated by the old and new atlases developed at Institut Curie. The accuracy of contouring was assessed by overlap volume and the associated standard deviations. RESULTS: Breast contouring based on the new atlas and by radiation oncologists presented a mean overlap of 0.80±0.09 for the right breast and 0.81±0.06 for the left breast. By comparing volumes of interest contoured by radiation oncologists and those obtained from the old atlas, mean overlap volumes were 0.75±0.08 and 0.74±0.13 for the right and left breasts, respectively. Twenty cases (ten right breasts and ten left breasts) used to create the new atlas were also reprocessed by this same atlas in order to assess the quality of automatic contouring of the breast when the case was already known to the software. The mean overlap volume in this case was 0.84±0.08 for the right breast and 0.83±0.06 for the left breast. Finally, after automatic contouring of organs at risk by means of the new atlas, the mean overlap volume was 0.87±0.04 for the heart and 0.93 for each lung (±0.05 for the right lung and±0.04 for the left lung). CONCLUSION: Workflow Box™ automatic contouring software, based on our new atlas provides reliable and clinically relevant organs at risk and breast contouring. The contours proposed by the software from the new atlas were better than those obtained with the previous atlas based on 95% isodoses obtained from old treatment plans. This software has therefore become more efficient, justifying its use in routine clinical practice for breast cancer contouring in patients treated in the lateral decubitus position. Investigations are currently underway to develop a fully automated process to ensure reliable, robust and operator-independent contouring and breast cancer treatment dosimetry in the lateral decubitus position. Promising preliminary results have already been obtained.
Subject(s)
Breast/diagnostic imaging , Organs at Risk/diagnostic imaging , Patient Positioning/methods , Software Validation , Unilateral Breast Neoplasms/diagnostic imaging , Unilateral Breast Neoplasms/radiotherapy , Automation , Female , Heart/diagnostic imaging , Humans , Lung/diagnostic imaging , Medical Illustration , Radiation Oncologists , SoftwareABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Intensity-modulated radiotherapy needs the strict delineation of target volumes as well as organs at risk and the time used for this procedure is long. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the Workflow Box system (Mirada Medical, UK) for automatic delineation and segmentation for everyday use of organs at risk and lymph nodes delineation in patients treated for early stage breast cancer. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Twenty patients' CT scans in treatment position for their breast cancer radiotherapy were delineated in respect of the ESTRO delineation guidelines to begin the creation of automatic delineation atlas. Then 30 other CT scans were delineated this time by the automatic delineation system and by the radiation oncologist (reference delineation plan). The precision of the delineation was evaluated using the overlap volume index and evaluation of standard deviation (SD). RESULTS: The study of organs at risk has shown that the mean overlap volumes were between 0.49 (SD=0.21) and 0.97 (ET=0.03). Five organs at risk out of nine had overlap volumes at least 0.8. The mean overlap volume for all organs at risk was 0.77 (SD=0.17). The system was less performing for the lymph nodes with a mean overlap volume of 0.43 (SD=0.1) and ranging between 0.23 (SD=0.13) and 0.52 (SD=0.1). The use of this system reduced the delineation time by 40% per patient. CONCLUSIONS: For patients with breast cancer, the system for automatic delineation and segmentation Workflow Box (Mirada Medical, UK) permitted to safely shorten the time for delineation with acceptable organs at risk delineation. Improvement of lymph node volumes is needed. A new evaluation will be realized after using the system in routine practice.
