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Evaluation of the impact of teaching on delineation variation during a virtual stereotactic ablative radiotherapy contouring workshop

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2021

Finbar Slevin Open the ORCID record for Finbar Slevin [Opens in a new window] ,
Romélie Rieu ,
Matthew Beasley ,
Richard Speight ,
Katharine Aitken ,
James Good ,
Fiona McDonald ,
Thomas Rackley ,
Ganesh Radhakrishna  and
Anoop Haridass
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Finbar Slevin*
Affiliation:
Leeds Cancer Centre, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Leeds, UK University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Romélie Rieu
Affiliation:
The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK
Matthew Beasley
Affiliation:
Leeds Cancer Centre, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Leeds, UK
Richard Speight
Affiliation:
Leeds Cancer Centre, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Leeds, UK
Katharine Aitken
Affiliation:
The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK
James Good
Affiliation:
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham, UK
Fiona McDonald
Affiliation:
The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK
Thomas Rackley
Affiliation:
Velindre Cancer Centre, Cardiff, UK
Ganesh Radhakrishna
Affiliation:
The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, UK
Anoop Haridass
Affiliation:
The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust, Liverpool, UK
Louise J. Murray
Affiliation:
Leeds Cancer Centre, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Leeds, UK University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Alison C. Tree
Affiliation:
The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK
Ann M. Henry
Affiliation:
Leeds Cancer Centre, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Leeds, UK University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
*
Author for correspondence: Finbar Slevin, Leeds Cancer Centre, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Beckett Street, Leeds LS9 7TF, UK. E-mail: finbarslevin@nhs.net
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Abstract

Introduction:

Variation in delineation of target volumes/organs at risk (OARs) is well recognised in radiotherapy and may be reduced by several methods including teaching. We evaluated the impact of teaching on contouring variation for thoracic/pelvic stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) during a virtual contouring workshop.

Materials and methods:

Target volume/OAR contours produced by workshop participants for three cases were evaluated against reference contours using DICE similarity coefficient (DSC) and line domain error (LDE) metrics. Pre- and post-workshop DSC results were compared using Wilcoxon signed ranks test to determine the impact of teaching during the workshop.

Results:

Of 50 workshop participants, paired pre- and post-workshop contours were available for 21 (42%), 20 (40%) and 22 (44%) participants for primary lung cancer, pelvic bone metastasis and pelvic node metastasis cases, respectively. Statistically significant improvements post-workshop in median DSC and LDE results were observed for 6 (50%) and 7 (58%) of 12 structures, respectively, although the magnitude of DSC/LDE improvement was modest in most cases. An increase in median DSC post-workshop ≥0·05 was only observed for GTVbone, IGTVlung and SacralPlex, and reduction in median LDE > 1 mm was only observed for GTVbone, CTVbone and SacralPlex. Post-workshop, median DSC values were >0·7 for 75% of structures. For 92% of the structures, post-workshop contours were considered to be acceptable or within acceptable variation following review by the workshop faculty.

Conclusions:

This study has demonstrated that virtual SABR contouring training is feasible and was associated with some improvements in contouring variation for multiple target volumes/OARs.

Keywords

Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapycontouringdelineationcontouring workshopcontour variabilityteaching impact
Type
Original Article
Information
Journal of Radiotherapy in Practice , Volume 22 , 2023 , e19
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

†

Joint first authors

‡

Joint senior authors

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