Doctors at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge aim to drastically cut cancer waiting times by using artificial intelligence (AI) to automate lengthy radiotherapy preparations.
Planning radiotherapy treatment can be a lengthy process. It starts with a 3D CT (Computed Tomography) imaging scan of the part of the body to be targeted. These CT images come in the form of stacks of 2D images, dozens of images deep, each of which must be examined and marked up by a radiation oncologist or specialist technician. This process is called contouring. In each image, an expert must manually draw a contour line around the tumours and key healthy organs at risk in the target area using dedicated computer software. For complex cases, this can take several hours in the planning of a single patient’s treatment.
This image segmentation task is a rate-limiting factor in the cancer treatment pathway for radiotherapy, which increases the burden of time on clinicians and the financial cost to hospitals. As this task is subjective, there can be significant variability across experts and institutions where acquisition protocols and patient demographics vary. This is a limitation to the use of imaging in clinical trials and can introduce variability in patient care.
cam.ac.uk/research/news/ai-...
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