Towards a European prospective data registry for particle therapy.

The evidence for the value of particle therapy (PT) is still sparse. While randomized trials remain a cornerstone for robust comparisons with photon-based radiotherapy, data registries collecting real-world data can play a crucial role in building evidence for new developments. This Perspective describes how the European Particle Therapy Network (EPTN) is actively working on establishing a prospective data registry encompassing all patients undergoing PT in European centers. Several obstacles and hurdles are discussed, for instance harmonization of nomenclature and structure of technical and dosimetric data and data protection issues. A preferred approach is the adoption of a federated data registry model with transparent and agile governance to meet European requirements for data protection, transfer, and processing. Funding of the registry, especially for operation after the initial setup process, remains a major challenge.

Lessons learned from events notified to the French Nuclear Safety Authority during the period 2007-13 in the medical field.

The analysis of events is crucial for accident prevention. In 2007, ASN set up a system for the notification of radiation protection events. The majority of them concern the exposure of patients undergoing therapeutic or diagnostic procedures and, to a lesser extent, occupational exposures and the management of radioactive effluents. The most significant events concern interventional radiological procedures and nuclear medicine, in which there are exceedances of mandatory dose limits and staff contaminations, respectively. Deterministic effects in patients were observed following interventional procedures and in nuclear medicine. Many events involve leakage of radioactive effluents and highlight the need to improve the monitoring and maintenance of radioactive effluent facilities. The causes are mainly of organisational and human origin. The lessons learned emphasise the importance of the role of medical physicists and radiation protection officers and the need to implement quality and risk management measures and to conduct clinical audits.

Medical physics personnel for medical imaging: requirements, conditions of involvement and staffing levels-French recommendations.

The French regulations concerning the involvement of medical physicists in medical imaging procedures are relatively vague. In May 2013, the ASN and the SFPM issued recommendations regarding Medical Physics Personnel for Medical Imaging: Requirements, Conditions of Involvement and Staffing Levels. In these recommendations, the various areas of activity of medical physicists in radiology and nuclear medicine have been identified and described, and the time required to perform each task has been evaluated. Criteria for defining medical physics staffing levels are thus proposed. These criteria are defined according to the technical platform, the procedures and techniques practised on it, the number of patients treated and the number of persons in the medical and paramedical teams requiring periodic training. The result of this work is an aid available to each medical establishment to determine their own needs in terms of medical physics.

A pre-clinical assessment of an atlas-based automatic segmentation tool for the head and neck.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Accurate conformal radiotherapy treatment requires manual delineation of target volumes and organs at risk (OAR) that is both time-consuming and subject to large inter-user variability. One solution is atlas-based automatic segmentation (ABAS) where a priori information is used to delineate various organs of interest. The aim of the present study is to establish the accuracy of one such tool for the head and neck (H&N) using two different evaluation methods. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Two radiotherapy centres were provided with an ABAS tool that was used to outline the brainstem, parotids and mandible on several patients. The results were compared to manual delineations for the first centre (EM1) and reviewed/edited for the second centre (EM2), both of which were deemed as equally valid gold standards. The contours were compared in terms of their volume, sensitivity and specificity with the results being interpreted using the Dice similarity coefficient and a receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve. RESULTS: Automatic segmentation took typically approximately 7min for each patient on a standard PC. The results indicated that the atlas contour volume was generally within +/-1SD of each gold standard apart from the parotids for EM1 and brainstem for EM2 that were over- and under-estimated, respectively (within +/-2SD). The similarity of the atlas contours with their respective gold standard was satisfactory with an average Dice coefficient for all OAR of 0.68+/-0.25 for EM1 and 0.82+/-0.13 for EM2. All data had satisfactory sensitivity and specificity resulting in a favourable position in ROC space. CONCLUSIONS: These tests have shown that the ABAS tool exhibits satisfactory sensitivity and specificity for the OAR investigated. There is, however, a systematic over-segmentation of the parotids (EM1) and under-segmentation of the brainstem (EM2) that require careful review and editing in the majority of cases. Such issues have been discussed with the software manufacturer and a revised version is due for release.

Evaluation of an atlas-based automatic segmentation software for the delineation of brain organs at risk in a radiation therapy clinical context.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Conformal radiation therapy techniques require the delineation of volumes of interest, a time-consuming and operator-dependent task. In this work, we aimed to evaluate the potential interest of an atlas-based automatic segmentation software (ABAS) of brain organs at risk (OAR), when used under our clinical conditions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Automatic and manual segmentations of the eyes, optic nerves, optic chiasm, pituitary gland, brain stem and cerebellum of 11 patients on T1-weighted magnetic resonance, 3-mm thick slice images were compared using the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC). The sensitivity and specificity of the ABAS were also computed and analysed from a radiotherapy point of view by splitting the ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) space into four sub-regions. RESULTS: Automatic segmentation of OAR was achieved in 7-8 min. Excellent agreement was obtained between automatic and manual delineations for organs exceeding 7 cm3: the DSC was greater than 0.8. For smaller structures, the DSC was lower than 0.41. CONCLUSIONS: These tests demonstrated that this ABAS is a robust and reliable tool for automatic delineation of large structures under clinical conditions in our daily practice, even though the small structures must continue to be delineated manually by an expert.