DeepWL: Robust EPID based Winston-Lutz Analysis using Deep Learning and Synthetic Image Generation

TL;DR

DeepWL is a deep learning approach that analyzes EPID-based Winston-Lutz QA images using synthetic data and optical ray-tracing, achieving high accuracy and robustness for linac quality assurance.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel synthetic image generation method and a deep learning model trained solely on synthetic data for Winston-Lutz analysis.

Findings

DeepWL achieved a mean dice coefficient of 0.964 for ball bearing segmentation.

DeepWL's displacement predictions were statistically similar to Canny Edge detection.

DeepWL outperformed Canny in segmentation robustness and correlation with manual annotations.

Abstract

Radiation therapy requires clinical linear accelerators to be mechanically and dosimetrically calibrated to a high standard. One important quality assurance test is the Winston-Lutz test which localizes the radiation isocentre of the linac. In the current work we demonstrate a novel method of analysing EPID based Winston-Lutz QA images using a deep learning model trained only on synthetic image data.In addition, we propose a novel method of generating the synthetic WL images and associated ground-truth masks using an optical ray-tracing engine to fake mega-voltage EPID images. The model called DeepWL was trained on 1500 synthetic WL images using data augmentation techniques for 180 epochs. The model was built using Keras with a TensorFlow backend on an Intel Core i5 6500T CPU and trained in approximately 15 hours. DeepWL was shown to produce ball bearing and multi-leaf collimator field segmentations with a mean dice coefficient of 0.964 and 0.994 respectively on previously unseen synthetic testing data. When DeepWL was applied to WL data measured on an EPID, the predicted mean displacements were shown to be statistically similar to the Canny Edge detection method. However, the DeepWL predictions for the ball bearing locations were shown to correlate better with manual annotations compared with the Canny edge detection algorithm. DeepWL was demonstrated to analyse Winston-Lutz images with accuracy suitable for routine linac quality assurance with some statistical evidence that it may outperform Canny Edge detection methods in terms of segmentation robustness and the resultant displacement predictions.