Cross-modality deep learning: Contouring of MRI data from annotated CT data only.

Journal: Medical physics
Published Date:

Abstract

PURPOSE: Online adaptive radiotherapy would greatly benefit from the development of reliable auto-segmentation algorithms for organs-at-risk and radiation targets. Current practice of manual segmentation is subjective and time-consuming. While deep learning-based algorithms offer ample opportunities to solve this problem, they typically require large datasets. However, medical imaging data are generally sparse, in particular annotated MR images for radiotherapy. In this study, we developed a method to exploit the wealth of publicly available, annotated CT images to generate synthetic MR images, which could then be used to train a convolutional neural network (CNN) to segment the parotid glands on MR images of head and neck cancer patients.

Authors

  • Jennifer P Kieselmann
    Joint Department of Physics, The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, SM2 5NG, UK.
  • Clifton D Fuller
    Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas.
  • Oliver J Gurney-Champion
    Joint Department of Physics, The Institute of Cancer Research, London, United Kingdom.
  • Uwe Oelfke
    The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.