Patient-specific daily updated deep learning auto-segmentation for MRI-guided adaptive radiotherapy.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Deep Learning (DL) technique has shown great potential but still has limited success in online contouring for MR-guided adaptive radiotherapy (MRgART). This study proposed a patient-specific DL auto-segmentation (DLAS) strategy using the patient's previous images and contours to update the model and improve segmentation accuracy and efficiency for MRgART.

METHODS AND MATERIALS

A prototype model was trained for each patient using the first set of MRI and corresponding contours as inputs. The patient-specific model was updated after each fraction with all the available fractional MRIs/contours, and then used to predict the segmentation for the next fraction. During model training, a variant was fitted under consistency constraints, limiting the differences in the volume, length and centroid between the predictions for the latest MRI within a reasonable range. The model performance was evaluated for both organ-at-risks and tumors auto-segmentation for a total of 6 abdominal/pelvic cases (each with at least 8 sets of MRIs/contours) underwent MRgART through Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) and 95% Hausdorff Distance (HD95), and was compared with deformable image registration (DIR) and frozen DL model (no updating after pre-training). The contouring time was also recorded and analyzed.

RESULTS

The proposed model achieved superior performance with higher mean DSC (0.90, 95 % CI: 0.88-0.95), as compared to DIR (0.63, 95 %CI: 0.59-0.68) and frozen DL models (0.74, 95 % CI: 0.71-0.79). As for tumors, the proposed method yielded a median DSC of 0.95, 95 % CI: 0.94-0.97, and a median HD95 of 1.63 mm, 95 % CI: 1.22 mm-2.06 mm. The contouring time was reduced significantly (p < 0.05) using the proposed method (73.4 ± 6.5 secs) compared to the manual process (12 ∼ 22 mins). The online ART time was reduced to 1650 ± 274 seconds with the proposed method, as compared to 3251.8 ± 447 seconds using the original workflow.

CONCLUSION

The proposed patient-specific DLAS method can significantly improve the segmentation accuracy and efficiency for longitudinal MRIs, thereby facilitating the routine practice of MRgART.