AAR-RT - A system for auto-contouring organs at risk on CT images for radiation therapy planning: Principles, design, and large-scale evaluation on head-and-neck and thoracic cancer cases

Cancer is a major public health problem worldwide and is the 2nd most common cause of death in the US, with ∼1.7 million new cancer cases expected to be diagnosed in the US in 2018, and with an estimated 609,640 American deaths to occur in 2018 (Siegal et al., 2018). Among several therapeutic options, nearly two thirds of cancer patients will have treatment that will involve radiation therapy (RT) (ASTR O website, 2018). Contouring of critical organs, called Organs at Risk (OARs), and target tumor in medical images taken for the purpose of RT planning (referred to as planning images) is required for accurate RT planning to ensure that a proper dose of radiation is delivered to the tumor while minim izing the radiation dose to healthy organs.

Source: Medical Image Analysis - January 29, 2019 Category: Radiology Authors: Xingyu Wu, Jayaram K. Udupa, Yubing Tong, Dewey Odhner, Gargi V. Pednekar, Charles B. Simone, David McLaughlin, Chavanon Apinorasethkul, Ontida Apinorasethkul, John Lukens, Dimitris Mihailidis, Geraldine Shammo, Paul James, Akhil Tiwari, Lisa Wojtowicz, J Source Type: research