Washington University, Saint Louis, MO, USA.
Radiother Oncol. 2010 Dec;97(3):572-8. doi: 10.1016/j.radonc.2010.06.009. Epub 2010 Aug 11.
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.
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.
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.
Using the consensus software tool incorporating STAPLE estimates provided the ability to create contours similar to the ones generated by expert physicians.
展示并检验一款新开发的软件工具，以估算和分析由资深放射肿瘤学家手动勾画的轮廓的共识。
开发了几种统计方法和图形用户界面。为了评估目的，我们使用了 RTOG 乳腺癌图谱项目中的三个乳腺癌 CT 扫描。在专家共识小组会议之前和之后对特定结构进行了轮廓勾画。使用共识软件工具对轮廓差异进行定性和定量评估。分析了不同结构的共识轮廓估计值，并使用 Dice 相似性和 Dice-Jaccard 系数进行了比较评估。
根据 Kappa 统计，左乳、保乳和心脏的一致性水平最高。在勾画胸壁和乳房时，前共识和后共识轮廓之间的差异有显著改善，而锁骨上和内乳淋巴结的差异则有显著变化。所有前共识 STAPLE 估算值和最终共识小组结构的 Dice 计算值，对于心脏、左右乳房、病例 A 保乳和胸壁，均达到 0.80 或更高。
使用包含 STAPLE 估算值的共识软件工具，能够创建与专家医生生成的轮廓相似的轮廓。
