Pretreatment information–aided automatic segmentation for online magnetic resonance imaging‐guided prostate radiotherapy

Abstract Background It is necessary to contour regions of interest (ROIs) for online magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)‐guided adaptive radiotherapy (MRIgART). These updated contours are used for online replanning to obtain maximum dosimetric benefits. Contouring can be accomplished using deformable image registration (DIR) and deep learning (DL)‐based autosegmentation methods. However, these methods may require considerable manual editing and thus prolong treatment time. Purpose The present study aimed to improve autosegmentation performance by integrating patients’ pretreatment information in a DL‐based segmentation algorithm. It is expected to improve the efficiency of current MRIgART process. Methods Forty patients with prostate cancer were enrolled retrospectively. The online adaptive MR images, patient‐specific planning computed tomography (CT), and contours in CT were used for segmentation. The deformable registration of planning CT and MR images was performed first to obtain a deformable CT and corresponding contours. A novel DL network, which can integrate such patient‐specific information (deformable CT and corresponding contours) into the segmentation task of MR images was designed. We performed a four‐fold cross‐validation for the DL models. The proposed method was compared with DIR and DL methods on segmentation of prostate cancer. The ROIs included the clinical target volume (CTV), bladder, rectum, left femur head, and right femur head. Dosimetric parameters of automatically generated ROIs were evaluated using a clinical treatment planning system. Results The proposed method enhanced the segmentation accuracy of conventional procedures. Its mean value of the dice similarity coefficient (93.5%) over the five ROIs was higher than both DIR (87.5%) and DL (87.2%). The number of patients ( n = 40) that required major editing using DIR, DL, and our method were 12, 18, and 7 (CTV); 17, 4, and 1 (bladder); 8, 11, and 5 (rectum); 2, 4, and 1 (left femur head); and 3, 7, and 1 (right femur head), respectively. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient of dosimetry parameters between the proposed method and ground truth was 0.972 ± 0.040, higher than that of DIR (0.897 ± 0.098) and DL (0.871 ± 0.134). Conclusion This study proposed a novel method that integrates patient‐specific pretreatment information into DL‐based segmentation algorithm. It outperformed baseline methods, thereby improving the efficiency and segmentation accuracy in adaptive radiotherapy.