Clinical evaluation of a deep learning segmentation model including manual adjustments afterwards for locally advanced breast cancer

INTRODUCTION: Deep learning (DL) models are increasingly developed for auto-segmentation in radiotherapy. Qualitative analysis is of great importance for clinical implementation, next to quantitative. This study evaluates a DL segmentation model for left- and right-sided locally advanced breast cancer both quantitatively and qualitatively. METHODS: For each side a DL model was trained, including primary breast CTV (CTVp), lymph node levels 1–4, heart, lungs, humeral head, thyroid and esophagus. For evaluation, both automatic segmentation, including correction of contours when needed, and manual delineation was performed and both processes were timed. Quantitative scoring with dice-similarity coefficient (DSC), 95% Hausdorff Distance (95%HD) and surface DSC (sDSC) was used to compare both the automatic (not-corrected) and corrected contours with the manual contours. Qualitative scoring was performed by five radiotherapy technologists and five radiation oncologists using a 3-point Likert scale. RESULTS: Time reduction was achieved using auto-segmentation in 95% of the cases, including correction. The time reduction (mean ± std) was 42.4% ± 26.5% and 58.5% ± 19.1% for OARs and CTVs, respectively, corresponding to an absolute mean reduction (hh:mm:ss) of 00:08:51 and 00:25:38. Good quantitative results were achieved before correction, e.g. mean DSC for the right-sided CTVp was 0.92 ± 0.06, whereas correction statistically significantly improved this contour by only 0.02 ± 0.05, respectively. In 92% of the cases, auto-contours were scored as clinically acceptable, with or without corrections. CONCLUSIONS: A DL segmentation model was trained and was shown to be a time-efficient way to generate clinically acceptable contours for locally advanced breast cancer.