1.Feasibility analysis of dose calculation for nasopharyngeal carcinoma radiotherapy planning using MRI-only simulation
Xuejie XIE ; Guoliang ZHANG ; Siqi YUAN ; Yuxiang LIU ; Yunxiang WANG ; Bining YANG ; Ji ZHU ; Xinyuan CHEN ; Kuo MEN ; Jianrong DAI
Chinese Journal of Radiation Oncology 2024;33(5):446-453
Objective:To evaluate the feasibility of using MRI-only simulation images for dose calculation of both photon and proton radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma cases.Methods:T 1-weighted MRI images and CT images of 100 patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma treated with radiotherapy in Cancer Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences from January 2020 to December 2021 were retrospectively analyzed. MRI images were converted to generate pseudo-CT images by using deep learning network models. The training set, validation set and test set included 70 cases, 10 cases and 20 cases, respectively. Convolutional neural network (CNN) and cycle-consistent generative adversarial neural network (CycleGAN) were exploited. Quantitative assessment of image quality was conducted by using mean absolute error (MAE) and structural similarity (SSIM), etc. Dose assessment was performed by using 3D-gamma pass rate and dose-volume histogram (DVH). The quality of pseudo-CT images generated was statistically analyzed by Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results:The MAE of the CNN and CycleGAN was (91.99±19.98) HU and (108.30±20.54) HU, and the SSIM was 0.97±0.01 and 0.96±0.01, respectively. In terms of dosimetry, the accuracy of pseudo-CT for photon dose calculation was higher than that of the proton plan. For CNN, the gamma pass rate (3 mm/3%) of the photon radiotherapy plan was 99.90%±0.13%. For CycleGAN, the value was 99.87%±0.34%. The gamma pass rates of proton radiotherapy plans were 98.65%±0.64% (CNN, 3 mm/3%) and 97.69%±0.86% (CycleGAN, 3 mm/3%). For DVH, the dose calculation accuracy in the photon plan of pseudo-CT was better than that of the proton plan.Conclusions:The deep learning-based model generated accurate pseudo-CT images from MR images. Most dosimetric differences were within clinically acceptable criteria for photon and proton radiotherapy, demonstrating the feasibility of an MRI-only workflow for radiotherapy of nasopharyngeal cancer. However, compared with the raw CT images, the error of the CT value in the nasal cavity of the pseudo-CT images was relatively large and special attention should be paid during clinical application.