Automatically tracking brain metastases after stereotactic radiosurgery

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Patients with brain metastases (BMs) are surviving longer and returning for multiple courses of stereotactic radiosurgery. BMs are monitored after radiation with follow-up magnetic resonance (MR) imaging every 2–3 months. This study investigated whether it is possible to automatically track BMs on longitudinal imaging and quantify the tumor response after radiotherapy. METHODS: The METRO process (MEtastasis Tracking with Repeated Observations was developed to automatically process patient data and track BMs. A longitudinal intrapatient registration method for T1 MR post-Gd was conceived and validated on 20 patients. Detections and volumetric measurements of BMs were obtained from a deep learning model. BM tracking was validated on 32 separate patients by comparing results with manual measurements of BM response and radiologists’ assessments of new BMs. Linear regression and residual analysis were used to assess accuracy in determining tumor response and size change. RESULTS: A total of 123 irradiated BMs and 38 new BMs were successfully tracked. 66 irradiated BMs were visible on follow-up imaging 3–9 months after radiotherapy. Comparing their longest diameter changes measured manually vs. METRO, the Pearson correlation coefficient was 0.88 (p < 0.001); the mean residual error was −8 ± 17%. The mean registration error was 1.5 ± 0.2 mm. CONCLUSIONS: Automatic, longitudinal tracking of BMs using deep learning methods is feasible. In particular, the software system METRO fulfills a need to automatically track and quantify volumetric changes of BMs prior to, and in response to, radiation therapy.