Copenhagen, Denmark
Onsite/Online

ESTRO 2022

Session Item

Saturday
May 07
09:00 - 10:00
Poster Station 1
01: Image processing & analysis
René Winter, Norway
1180
Poster Discussion
Physics
AI auto-segmentation for MRgRT of prostate cancer: evaluating 269 MR images from two institutes
Maria Kawula, Germany
PD-0067

Abstract

AI auto-segmentation for MRgRT of prostate cancer: evaluating 269 MR images from two institutes
Authors:

Maria Kawula1, Indrawati Hadi2, Davide Cusumano3, Luca Boldrini3, Lorenzo Placidi4, Stefanie Corradini1, Claus Belka1,5, Guillaume Landry1, Christopher Kurz1

1University Hospital, LMU Munich, Radiation Oncology, Munich, Germany; 2University Hospital, LMU Munich, Radiation Oncology , Munich, Germany; 3Fondazione Policlinico Universitario “Agostino Gemelli” IRCCS, Radiation Oncology, Rome, Italy; 4Fondazione Policlinico Universitario “Agostino Gemelli” IRCCS, Radiation Oncoloogy, Rome, Italy; 5German Cancer Consortium, (DKTK), Munich, Germany

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Purpose or Objective

The introduction of MR Linacs into clinics has enabled online adaptive radiotherapy, at the cost of longer workflows, notably due to the need for online recontouring. The aim of this work was (1) the development of an AI-based segmentation of organs at risk (OARs) and the CTV for prostate cancer treatments at the 0.35 T MRIdian, (2) to examine the transferability of trained models between institutes, and (3) to compare the fraction contours propagated by the MRIdian treatment planning system (TPS) with the AI predictions.

Material and Methods

MR images of 19 prostate cancer patients (19 planning + 240 fraction images) treated at our institution (cohort 1, C1) and 73 planning images acquired at a collaborating institution (cohort 2, C2) were included. The bladder, rectum and CTV were manually segmented on planning MRIs by radiation oncologists, while fraction contours were propagated by the TPS and corrected by physicians shortly before the irradiation. We trained a 3D U-Net on C2 planning data and tested the network performance using the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), the average and 95th percentile Hausdorff distance (HDavg and HD95) on 3 datasets: (i) 10 planning C2 images not used for training, (ii) 19 C1 planning images, (iii) 240 C1 fraction images. For the rectum, we evaluated slices up to 1.5cm above/below the PTV top/bottom. Additionally, for 5 C1 patients with 5 fractions each, we propagated the manual planning contours to the anatomy of the day without further corrections using a simulated workflow in the TPS. Finally, we divided the CTV test set into subgroups of grade I&II (10%) and III&IV (90%) cases, due to differences in inclusion of seminal vesicles. Post-prostatectomy patients were excluded from the CTV analysis.

Results

For OARs, the mean DSC, HDavg, and HD95 for C2 and C1 planning images were comparable, while the performance for fractions decreased slightly (see Table 1 and Fig. 1). CTV predictions showed higher network performance for C2 than C1 data and higher performance for grade III&IV cases than I&II. For the bladder, apart from one case, network predictions were better than the TPS propagated contours, both with average DSC=0.91(0.11). The outlier cases were related to patients with limited bladder filling, which were absent in the C2 training set. For the rectum, average DSCpred=0.86(0.15) and DSCprop=0.88(0.16) were obtained.

Conclusion

Results for OARs suggest model transferability between institutes. However, this does not apply to CTV. Worse scores for fraction images might suggest higher contour variability caused by time pressure during adaptation. The CTV model performs poorly for grades II suggesting that separate training may be required. TPS propagated contours show comparable quality to the network predictions, however, the analysis may be biased in favor of propagated contours, which were the basis for manual corrections leading to the ground truth.

Acknowledgments:
Wilhelm Sander-Stiftung