Exploration of overlap volumes for radiotherapy plan evaluation with the aim of healthy tissue sparing

• Published in: Computers in biology and medicine Vol. 166; p. 107523
• Main Authors: Schlachter, Matthias, Peters, Samuel, Camenisch, Daniel, Putora, Paul Martin, Bühler, Katja
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Ltd 01-11-2023; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Clinical decision making; Data analysis; Decision making; Healthy tissue sparing; Humans; Information technology; Neoplasms - diagnostic imaging; Neoplasms - radiotherapy; Overlap volume; Radiation therapy; Radiotherapy Dosage; Radiotherapy planning; Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted - methods; Scientific visualization; Software; Tissues; User-Computer Interface; Visual computing; Visualization; Radiotherapy planning; Overlap volume; Visualization; Healthy tissue sparing; Visual computing
• ISSN: 0010-4825; 1879-0534; 1879-0534
• DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107523

Development of a novel interactive visualization approach for the exploration of radiotherapy treatment plans with a focus on overlap volumes with the aim of healthy tissue sparing.
We propose a visualization approach to include overlap volumes in the radiotherapy treatment plan evaluation process. Quantitative properties can be interactively explored to identify critical regions and used to steer the visualization for a detailed inspection of candidates. We evaluated our approach with a user study covering the individual visualizations and their interactions regarding helpfulness, comprehensibility, intuitiveness, decision-making and speed.
A user study with three domain experts was conducted using our software and evaluating five data sets each representing a different type of cancer and location by performing a set of tasks and filling out a questionnaire. The results show that the visualizations and interactions help to identify and evaluate overlap volumes according to their physical and dose properties. Furthermore, the task of finding dose hot spots can also benefit from our approach.
The results indicate the potential to enhance the current treatment plan evaluation process in terms of healthy tissue sparing.
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•Interactive visualization for the exploration of radiotherapy treatment plans•Focus is on overlap volumes with the aim of healthy tissue sparing•Quantitative properties can be interactively explored to identify critical regions•Interaction is used to steer the visualization for a detailed inspection•Results indicate the potential to enhance the treatment plan evaluation process