Clinical implementation of MRI-based organs-at-risk auto-segmentation with convolutional networks for prostate radiotherapy

摘要

Structure delineation is a necessary, yet time-consuming manual procedure in radiotherapy. Consistent and accurate delineation of organs-at-risk (OARs) and target structures for prostate patients is vital when performing dose escalation and treating patients with highly conformal plans [ ]. Traditionally, computed tomography (CT) has been used for radiotherapy simulation and structure delineation [ ]. In the last few decades, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has found its way for radiotherapy simulation as it provides superior soft-tissue contrast compared to CT [ , ], thus enabling more accurate delineation of target regions and critical structures compared to CT [ – ].