Automated delineation of the clinical target volume using anatomically constrained 3D expansion of the gross tumor volume.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

Delineation of the clinical target volume (CTV) is arguably the weakest link in the treatment planning chain. This work aims to support clinicians in this crucial task.

Methods and materials

While the CTV itself is ambiguous, it is much easier to identify structures that do not belong to the CTV and serve as barriers to the spread of the disease. We segment the known barrier structures using a convolutional neural network (CNN). The CTV is then obtained by starting from the manually delineated gross tumor volume (GTV) and expanding it while taking into account the barrier structures. Mathematically, we define the CTV as an iso-surface in the 3D map of shortest paths of all voxels from the GTV. The shortest paths are found with the Dijkstra algorithm. While the method

SUBMITTER: Shusharina N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10660950 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature