Evidence map›Paper›PMID 38066074›Full record

ArticleScientific reports2023

Fully-automated, CT-only GTV contouring for palliative head and neck radiotherapy.

Skylar S Gay, Carlos E Cardenas, Callistus Nguyen, Tucker J Netherton, Cenji Yu, Yao Zhao, Stephen Skett, Tina Patel, Delali Adjogatse, Teresa Guerrero Urbano and 5 more

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Scientific reports, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
2.1field-weighted citation impact, top 13% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed, 6 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Deep learning for autosegmentation for radiotherapy treatment planning: State-of-the-art and novel perspectives.Strahlentherapie und Onkologie : Organ der Deutschen Rontgengesellschaft ... [et al] · 2025
    Review
  2. Head and Neck Gross Tumor Volume Automatic Segmentation Using PocketNet.Head and Neck Tumor Segmentation for MR-Guided Applications : First MICCAI Challenge, HNTS-MRG 2024, held in conjunction with MICCAI 2024, Marrakesh, Morocco, October 17, 2024, proceedings · 2025
    Article
  3. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

15 authors at 6 institutions in 3 countries.

Skylar S GayUnit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA. sgay1@mdanderson.org.
Carlos E CardenasDepartment of Radiation Oncology, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA.
Callistus NguyenUnit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.
Tucker J NethertonUnit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.
Cenji YuUnit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.
Yao ZhaoUnit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.
Stephen SkettGuy's Cancer Centre, London, UK.
Tina PatelGuy's Cancer Centre, London, UK.
Delali AdjogatseGuy's Cancer Centre, London, UK.
Teresa Guerrero UrbanoGuy's Cancer Centre, London, UK.
Komeela NaidooStellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Beth M BeadleStanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
Jinzhong YangUnit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.
Ajay AggarwalGuy's Cancer Centre, London, UK.
Laurence E CourtUnit 1472, Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Blvd, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.
London Cancer · GBThe University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center · USThe University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston · USStanford University · USStellenbosch University · ZAUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham · US

Funding

Tumor Evolution and Metastasis ProgramP30CA016672 · NCI · UNIVERSITY OF TX MD ANDERSON CAN CTR · PI Fabien Delerue · 1985 to 2026
$290.8M
Cancer Research UK 28990NCI NIH HHS P30 CA016672NIH HHS P30CA016672Wellcome TrustWellcome Trust 215706/Z/19/Z
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Planning for palliative radiotherapy is performed without the advantage of MR or PET imaging in many clinics. Here, we investigated CT-only GTV delineation for palliative treatment of head and neck cancer. Two multi-institutional datasets of palliative-intent treatment plans were retrospectively acquired: a set of 102 non-contrast-enhanced CTs and a set of 96 contrast-enhanced CTs. The nnU-Net auto-segmentation network was chosen for its strength in medical image segmentation, and five approaches separately trained: (1) heuristic-cropped, non-contrast images with a single GTV channel, (2) cropping around a manually-placed point in the tumor center for non-contrast images with a single GTV channel, (3) contrast-enhanced images with a single GTV channel, (4) contrast-enhanced images with separate primary and nodal GTV channels, and (5) contrast-enhanced images along with synthetic MR images with separate primary and nodal GTV channels. Median Dice similarity coefficient ranged from 0.6 to 0.7, surface Dice from 0.30 to 0.56, and 95th Hausdorff distance from 14.7 to 19.7 mm across the five approaches. Only surface Dice exhibited statistically-significant difference across these five approaches using a two-tailed Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test (p ≤ 0.05). Our CT-only results met or exceeded published values for head and neck GTV autocontouring using multi-modality images. However, significant edits would be necessary before clinical use in palliative radiotherapy.

Indexed as

Head and Neck NeoplasmsRadiotherapy Planning, Computer-AssistedHumansMulticenter Studies as TopicPalliative CarePositron-Emission TomographyRetrospective StudiesTomography, X-Ray Computed

Identifiers

PMID38066074
PMCPMC10709623
OpenAlexW4389498003

What Socratic holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.