title: Accuracy of patient-specific organ dose estimates obtained using an automated image segmentation algorithm.
abstract: The overall goal of this work is to develop a rapid, accurate, and automated software tool to estimate patient-specific organ doses from computed tomography (CT) scans using simulations to generate dose maps combined with automated segmentation algorithms. This work quantified the accuracy of organ dose estimates obtained by an automated segmentation algorithm. We hypothesized that the autosegmentation algorithm is sufficiently accurate to provide organ dose estimates, since small errors delineating organ boundaries will have minimal effect when computing mean organ dose. A leave-one-out validation study of the automated algorithm was performed with 20 head-neck CT scans expertly segmented into nine regions. Mean organ doses of the automatically and expertly segmented regions were computed from Monte Carlo-generated dose maps and compared. The automated segmentation algorithm estimated the mean organ dose to be within 10% of the expert segmentation for regions other than the spinal canal, with the median error for each organ region below 2%. In the spinal canal region, the median error was [Formula: see text], with a maximum absolute error of 28% for the single-atlas approach and 11% for the multiatlas approach. The results demonstrate that the automated segmentation algorithm can provide accurate organ dose estimates despite some segmentation errors.
authors.affiliation: Marquette University , Department of Biomedical Engineering, PO Box 1881, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201, United States.
authors.forename: Taly Gilat
authors.initials: TG
authors.lastname: Schmidt
authors.affiliation: Varian Medical Systems , 3120 Hansen Way, Palo Alto, California 94304, United States.
authors.forename: Adam S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Varian Medical Systems , 3120 Hansen Way, Palo Alto, California 94304, United States.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Coradi
authors.affiliation: Varian Medical Systems , 3120 Hansen Way, Palo Alto, California 94304, United States.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Haas
authors.affiliation: Varian Medical Systems , 3120 Hansen Way, Palo Alto, California 94304, United States.
authors.forename: Josh
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Star-Lack
keywords: computed tomography; organ dose; segmentation