Fully Automated Treatment Planning for Head and Neck Radiotherapy using a Voxel-Based Dose Prediction and Dose Mimicking Method

TL;DR

This paper introduces an atlas-based, voxel-level dose prediction and dose mimicking method for fully automated head and neck radiotherapy planning, replacing traditional dose-volume objectives with spatial dose objectives.

Contribution

It presents a novel atlas-based approach that predicts spatial dose distributions and converts them into deliverable plans, improving automation and potentially treatment quality.

Findings

Automated planning achieved more dose criteria than clinical plans.

Increased sparing of organs at risk with automated planning.

Better target coverage and dose uniformity in automated plans.

Abstract

Recent works in automated radiotherapy treatment planning have used machine learning based on historical treatment plans to infer the spatial dose distribution for a novel patient directly from the planning image. We present an atlas-based approach which learns a dose prediction model for each patient (atlas) in a training database, and then learns to match novel patients to the most relevant atlases. The method creates a spatial dose objective, which specifies the desired dose-per-voxel, and therefore replaces any requirement for specifying dose-volume objectives for conveying the goals of treatment planning. A probabilistic dose distribution is inferred from the most relevant atlases, and is scalarized using a conditional random field to determine the most likely spatial distribution of dose to yield a specific dose prior (histogram) for relevant regions of interest. Voxel-based dose mimicking then converts the predicted dose distribution to a deliverable treatment plan dose distribution. In this study, we investigated automated planning for right-sided oropharaynx head and neck patients treated with IMRT and VMAT. We compare four versions of our dose prediction pipeline using a database of 54 training and 12 independent testing patients. Our preliminary results are promising; automated planning achieved a higher number of dose evaluation criteria in 7 patients and an equal number in 4 patients compared with clinical. Overall, the relative number of criteria achieved was higher for automated planning versus clinical (17 vs 8) and automated planning demonstrated increased sparing for organs at risk (52 vs 44) and better target coverage/uniformity (41 vs 31).