Reducing inter- and intra-planner variability in radiotherapy plan output with a commercial knowledge-based planning solution.
Physica medica : PM : an international journal devoted to the applications of physics to medicine and biology : official journal of the Italian Association of Biomedical Physics (AIFB)(2018)
Abstract
PURPOSE:This study measured to which extent RapidPlan can drive a reduction of the human-caused variability in prostate cancer treatment planning.
METHODS:Seventy clinical prostate plans were used to train a RapidPlan model. Seven planners, with different levels of planning experience, were asked to plan a VMAT treatment for fifteen prostate cancer patients with and without RapidPlan assistance. The plans were compared on the basis of target coverage, conformance and OAR sparing. Inter-planner and intra-planner variability were assessed on the basis of the Plan Quality Metric formalism. Differences in mean values and InterQuartile Ranges between patients and operators were assessed.
RESULTS:RapidPlan-assisted plans matched manual planning in terms of target coverage, homogeneity, conformance and bladder sparing but outperformed it for rectum and femoral heads sparing. 8 out of 15 patients showed a statistically significant increase in overall quality. Inter-planner variability is reduced in RapidPlan-assisted planning for rectum and femoral heads while bladder variability was constant. The inter-planner variability of the overall plan quality, IQR of PQM%, was approximately halved for all patients. RapidPlan assistance induced a larger increase in plan quality for less experienced planners. At the same time, a reduction in intra-planner variability is measured with a significant overall reduction.
CONCLUSIONS:The assistance of RapidPlan during the optimization of treatments for prostate cancer induces a significant increase of plan quality and a contextual reduction of plan variability. RapidPlan is proven to be a valuable tool to leverage the planning skills of less experienced planners ensuring a better homogeneity of treatment plan quality.
MoreTranslated text
AI Read Science
Must-Reading Tree
Example
![](https://originalfileserver.aminer.cn/sys/aminer/pubs/mrt_preview.jpeg)
Generate MRT to find the research sequence of this paper
Chat Paper
Summary is being generated by the instructions you defined