Retrospective clinical evaluation of a decision-support software for adaptive radiotherapy of Head & Neck cancer patients

TL;DR

This study evaluates RTapp, a decision-support software for adaptive radiotherapy in head and neck cancer, demonstrating its ability to predict treatment needs up to four fractions in advance, thus aiding clinical decision-making.

Contribution

The paper introduces RTapp, a novel software that estimates doses and predicts treatment adaptations in real-time for head and neck cancer radiotherapy.

Findings

RTapp predicted treatment adaptations up to 4 fractions ahead.

68% of cases showed violations requiring adaptation.

Prediction accuracy was highest near the adaptation point.

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the clinical need for automated decision-support platforms for Adaptive Radiotherapy Therapy (ART) of Head & Neck cancer (HNC) patients. Methods: We tested RTapp (SegAna), a new decision-support software for ART, to investigate 22 HNC patients data retrospectively. For each fraction, RTapp estimated the daily and cumulative doses received by targets and OARs from daily 3D imaging in real-time. RTapp also included a prediction algorithm that analyzed dosimetric parameters (DP) trends against dosimetric endpoints (DE) to trigger adaptation up to 4 fractions ahead. Warning (V95<95%) and adaptation (V95<93%) DEs were set for PTVs. OAR adaptation DEs of +10% (DE10) were set for all Dmax and Dmean DPs. Any DE violation at end of treatment (EOT) triggered a DP trends review to determine the DE-crossing fraction Fx and evaluate the prediction model accuracy (difference between calculated and predicted DP values with 95% confidence intervals). Results: RTapp was able to address the needs of treatment adaptation. 15/22 studies (68%) violated PTV coverage or parotids Dmean at EOT. 9 PTVs had V95<95% (mean coverage decrease of -7.7+/-3.3 %) including 4 flagged for adaptation at median Fx=11.5 (range: 6-18). 15 parotids were flagged for exceeding Dmean constraints with median increase of +3.18 Gy (range: 0.18-6.31 Gy) at EOT, including 8 with DP>DE10. The differences between predicted and calculated PTV V95 and parotids Dmean was up to 7.6% (mean: -2.9+/-4.6 %) and 5 Gy (mean: 0.2+/-1.6 Gy), respectively. The most accurate predictions were obtained closest to Fx. For parotids, Fx ranged between fractions 1 to 23, the lack of specific trend demonstrated the need to verify treatment adaptation for every fraction. Conclusion: Integrated in an ART clinical workflow, RTapp can predict whether specific treatment would require adaptation up to 4 fractions ahead of time.