Hu Harold Yang, Hu Shaw Yang, Yang Min, Hu Yanle
Basis Scottsdale, Scottsdale, AZ, USA.
The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA.
Sci Rep. 2024 Dec 4;14(1):30215. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-81167-7.
To propose a clinically oriented quantitative metric, Hu similarity coefficient (HSC), to evaluate contour quality, gauge the performance of auto contouring methods, and aid effective allocation of clinical resources. The HSC is defined as the ratio of the number of boundary points of the initial contour that doesn't require modifications over the number of boundary points of the final adjusted contour. To demonstrate the clinical utility of the HSC in contour evaluation, we used publicly available pelvic CT data from the Cancer Imaging Archive. The bladder was selected as the organ of interest. It was contoured by a certified medical dosimetrist and reviewed by a certified medical physicist. This contour served as the ground truth contour. From this contour, we simulated two contour sets. The first set had the same Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) but different HSCs, whereas the second set kept a constant HSC while exhibiting different DSCs. Four individuals were asked to adjust the simulated contours until they met clinical standards. The corresponding contour modification times were recorded and normalized by individual's manual contouring times from scratch. The normalized contour modification time was correlated to the HSC and DSC to evaluate their suitability as quantitative metrics assessing contour quality. The HSC maintained a strong correlation with the normalized contour modification time when both sets of simulated contours were included in analysis. The correlation between the DSC and normalized contour modification time, however, was weak. Compared to the DSC, the HSC is more suitable for evaluating contour quality. We demonstrated that the HSC correlated well with the average normalized contour modification time. Clinically, contour modification time is the most relevant factor in allocating clinical resources. Therefore, the HSC is better suited than the DSC to assess contour quality from a clinical perspective.
提出一种以临床为导向的定量指标——胡氏相似系数（HSC），用于评估轮廓质量、衡量自动轮廓绘制方法的性能，并辅助临床资源的有效分配。HSC定义为初始轮廓中无需修改的边界点数与最终调整轮廓的边界点数之比。为了证明HSC在轮廓评估中的临床实用性，我们使用了来自癌症影像存档的公开可用盆腔CT数据。选择膀胱作为感兴趣的器官。由一名认证的医学剂量师勾勒其轮廓，并由一名认证的医学物理学家进行审核。该轮廓用作真实轮廓。从这个轮廓出发，我们模拟了两组轮廓。第一组具有相同的骰子相似系数（DSC）但HSC不同，而第二组保持HSC不变，同时呈现不同的DSC。邀请四个人调整模拟轮廓，直到它们符合临床标准。记录相应的轮廓修改次数，并通过个人从零开始手动绘制轮廓的时间进行归一化。将归一化的轮廓修改时间与HSC和DSC相关联，以评估它们作为评估轮廓质量的定量指标的适用性。当两组模拟轮廓都纳入分析时，HSC与归一化的轮廓修改时间保持着很强的相关性。然而，DSC与归一化的轮廓修改时间之间的相关性较弱。与DSC相比，HSC更适合评估轮廓质量。我们证明了HSC与平均归一化轮廓修改时间密切相关。在临床上，轮廓修改时间是分配临床资源时最相关的因素。因此，从临床角度来看，HSC比DSC更适合评估轮廓质量。
