Minimal point volumetric outlining and editing for radiotherapy treatment planning. Issue 3 (1st September 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bridge, Pete; Fielding, Andrew; Rowntree, Pamela; Pullar, Andrew
• Is Part Of: Journal of radiotherapy in practice. Volume 16:Issue 3(2016)
• Page Start: 280
• Page End: 285
• Publication Date: 2017-09-01
• Subjects: outlining, -- radiotherapy, -- segmentation, -- speed, -- treatment planning; Radiotherapy -- Periodicals; 615.842005
• DOI: 10.1017/S146039691700019X
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1460-3969

Abstract

Abstract: Purpose: A novel radiotherapy outlining application uses a small number of user-assigned points across orthogonal planes to generate a mesh which is then edited across multiple slices using innovative three-dimensional (3D) sculpting tools. This paper presents the results of a bladder outlining study that compared times and volumes for the new tool with those of a conventional manual outlining tool. Materials and methods: All students undertaking their first University radiotherapy planning module were invited to participate. Following training, they performed a timed outlining of the same male bladder dataset and provided feedback on their preferred method. Results: Comparison of times from the resulting ten datasets demonstrated that the 3D segmentation tool was significantly faster than conventional software with a mean time of 11·9 minutes compared with 19·2 minutes ( p =0·03). The users expressed a preference for the new tool (eight users) over the conventional outlining software (two users). Conclusions: A minimal point 3D volumetric manual outlining tool utilising orthogonal computed tomography planes demonstrated significant time saving for bladder segmentation compared with axial-based outlining within a group of novice outliners. Future work aims to establish the role of the 3D multi-slice sculpting tools in editing of auto-segmentation derived contour sets.