Automatic MRI atlas-based external beam radiation therapy treatment planning for prostate cancer

Prostate radiation therapy dose planning currently requires computed tomography (CT) scans as they contain electron density information needed for patient dose calculations. However magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images have significantly superior soft-tissue contrast for segmenting organs of interest and determining the target volume for treatment. This paper describes work on the development of an alternative treatment workflow enabling both organ delineation and dose planning to be performed using MRI alone. This is achieved by atlas based segmentation and the generation of pseudo-CT scans from MRI. Planning and dosimetry results for three prostate cancer patients from Calvary Mater Newcastle Hospital (Australia) are presented supporting the feasibility of this workflow. Good DSC scores were found for the atlas based segmentation of the prostate (mean 0.84) and bones (mean 0.89). The agreement between MRI/pseudo-CT and CT planning was quantified by dose differences and distance to agreement in corresponding voxels. Dose differences were found to be less than 2%. Chi values indicate that the planning CT and pseudo-CT dose distributions are equivalent