Logo image
Comparative Study With New Accuracy Metrics for Target Volume Contouring in PET Image Guided Radiation Therapy
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Comparative Study With New Accuracy Metrics for Target Volume Contouring in PET Image Guided Radiation Therapy

Tony Shepherd, Mika Teras, Reinhard R Beichel, Ronald Boellaard, Michel Bruynooghe, Volker Dicken, Mark J Gooding, Peter J Julyan, John A Lee, Sébastien Lefevre, …
IEEE transactions on medical imaging, Vol.31(11), pp.2006-2024
11/2012
DOI: 10.1109/TMI.2012.2202322
PMCID: PMC5570440
PMID: 22692898
url
https://hal.science/hal-00763488View
Open Access

Abstract

The impact of positron emission tomography (PET) on radiation therapy is held back by poor methods of defining functional volumes of interest. Many new software tools are being proposed for contouring target volumes but the different approaches are not adequately compared and their accuracy is poorly evaluated due to the ill-definition of ground truth. This paper compares the largest cohort to date of established, emerging and proposed PET contouring methods, in terms of accuracy and variability. We emphasize spatial accuracy and present a new metric that addresses the lack of unique ground truth. Thirty methods are used at 13 different institutions to contour functional volumes of interest in clinical PET/CT and a custom-built PET phantom representing typical problems in image guided radiotherapy. Contouring methods are grouped according to algorithmic type, level of interactivity and how they exploit structural information in hybrid images. Experiments reveal benefits of high levels of user interaction, as well as simultaneous visualization of CT images and PET gradients to guide interactive procedures. Method-wise evaluation identifies the danger of over-automation and the value of prior knowledge built into an algorithm.
Computed Tomography Oncology Tumors Performance evaluation Human computer interaction phantoms Image segmentation positron emission tomography (PET) Imaging phantoms Positron emission tomography

Details

Metrics

Logo image