Synthetic CT generation for MRI-guided adaptive radiotherapy in prostate cancer

Current MRI-guided adaptive radiotherapy (MRgART) workflows require fraction-specific electron and/or mass density maps, which are created by deformable image registration (DIR) between the simulation CT images and daily MR images. Manual density overrides may also be needed where DIR-produced results are inaccurate. This approach slows the adaptive radiotherapy workflow and introduces additional dosimetric uncertainties, especially in the presence of the magnetic field. This study investigated a method based on a conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN) with a multi-planar method to generate synthetic CT images from low-field MR images to improve efficiency in MRgART workflows for prostate cancer. Fifty-seven male patients, who received MRI-guided radiation therapy to the pelvis using the ViewRay MRIdian Linac, were selected. Forty-five cases were randomly assigned to the training cohort with the remaining twelve cases assigned to the validation/testing cohort. All patient datasets had a semi-paired DIR-deformed CT-sim image and 0.35T MR image acquired using a true fast imaging with steady-state precession (TrueFISP) sequence. Synthetic CT images were compared with deformed CT images to evaluate image quality and dosimetric accuracy. To evaluate the dosimetric accuracy of this method, clinical plans were recalculated on synthetic CT images in the MRIdian treatment planning system. Dose volume histograms for planning target volumes (PTVs) and organs-at-risk (OARs) and dose distributions using gamma analyses were evaluated. The mean-absolute-errors (MAEs) in CT numbers were 30.1 ± 4.2 HU, 19.6 ± 2.3 HU and 158.5 ± 26.0 HU for the whole pelvis, soft tissue, and bone, respectively. The peak signal-to-noise ratio was 35.2 ± 1.7 and the structural index similarity measure was 0.9758 ± 0.0035. The dosimetric difference was on average less than 1% for all PTV and OAR metrics. Plans showed good agreement with gamma pass rates of 99% and 99.9% for 1%/1 mm and 2%/2 mm, respectively. Our study demonstrates the potential of using synthetic CT images created with a multi-planar cGAN method from 0.35T MRI TrueFISP images for the MRgART treatment of prostate radiotherapy. Future work will validate the method in a large cohort of patients and investigate the limitations of the method in the adaptive workflow.