Medical College of Wisconsin
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Tools for consensus analysis of experts' contours for radiotherapy structure definitions. Radiother Oncol 2010 Dec;97(3):572-8

Date

08/17/2010

Pubmed ID

20708285

Pubmed Central ID

PMC3116271

DOI

10.1016/j.radonc.2010.06.009

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-78651519718 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   85 Citations

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: To demonstrate and examine the ability of a newly developed software tool to estimate and analyze consensus contours from manually created contours by expert radiation oncologists.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Several statistical methods and a graphical user interface were developed. For evaluation purposes, we used three breast cancer CT scans from the RTOG Breast Cancer Atlas Project. Specific structures were contoured before and after the experts' consensus panel meeting. Differences in the contours were evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively by the consensus software tool. Estimates of consensus contours were analyzed for the different structures and Dice-similarity and Dice-Jaccard coefficients were used for comparative evaluation.

RESULTS: Based on kappa statistics, highest levels of agreement were seen in the left-breast, lumpectomy, and heart. Significant improvements between pre- and post-consensus contours were seen in delineation of the chestwall and breasts while significant variations were noticed in the supraclavicular and internal mammary nodes. Dice calculations for all pre-consensus STAPLE estimations and final consensus panel structures reached 0.80 or greater for the heart, left/right-breast, case-A lumpectomy, and chestwall.

CONCLUSIONS: Using the consensus software tool incorporating STAPLE estimates provided the ability to create contours similar to the ones generated by expert physicians.

Author List

Allozi R, Li XA, White J, Apte A, Tai A, Michalski JM, Bosch WR, El Naqa I

Author

An Tai PhD Associate Professor in the Radiation Oncology department at Medical College of Wisconsin




MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Breast Neoplasms
Female
Humans
Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted
Radiotherapy, Conformal
Software
Tumor Burden