title: Workflow-centred evaluation of an automatic lesion tracking software for chemotherapy monitoring by CT.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  In chemotherapy monitoring, an estimation of the change in tumour size is an important criterion for the assessment of treatment success. This requires a comparison between corresponding lesions in the baseline and follow-up computed tomography (CT) examinations. We evaluate the clinical benefits of an automatic lesion tracking tool that identifies the target lesions in the follow-up CT study and pre-computes the lesion volumes.
  
  
  METHODS
  Four radiologists performed volumetric follow-up examinations for 52 patients with and without lesion tracking. In total, 139 lung nodules, liver metastases and lymph nodes were given as target lesions. We measured reading time, inter-reader variability in lesion identification and volume measurements, and the amount of manual adjustments of the segmentation results.
  
  
  RESULTS
  With lesion tracking, target lesion assessment time decreased by 38 % or 22 s per lesion. Relative volume difference between readers was reduced from 0.171 to 0.1. Segmentation quality was comparable with and without lesion tracking.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our automatic lesion tracking tool can make interpretation of follow-up CT examinations quicker and provide results that are less reader-dependent.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Computed tomography is widely used to follow-up lesions in oncological patients. Novel software automatically identifies and measures target lesions in oncological follow-up examinations. This enables a reduction of target lesion assessment. The automated measurements are less reader-dependent.
authors: Fraunhofer MEVIS-Institute for Medical Image Computing, Universitätsallee 29, 28359, Bremen, Germany. jan.moltz@mevis.fraunhofer.de
authors: Jan Hendrik
authors: JH
authors: Moltz
authors: Melvin
authors: M
authors: D'Anastasi
authors: Andreas
authors: A
authors: Kiessling
authors: Daniel
authors: D
authors: Pinto dos Santos
authors: Christoph
authors: C
authors: Schülke
authors: Heinz-Otto
authors: HO
authors: Peitgen
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D006801:Humans; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000188:drug therapy*; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000188:drug therapy*; D008207:Lymphatic Metastasis / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D011857:Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012986:Software Validation; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed; D057188:Workflow