Computer-Aided Delineation of Targets for Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy Using Dynamic Contrast Enhanced MRI in Patients with Early Stage Breast Cancer: A Feasibility Study

Zheng Chang¹, Janet Horton¹, Fang-Fang Yin¹

Partial breast irradiation has been a convenient alternative to conventionally fractionated whole breast radiotherapy. In this work, single-fraction stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) was used to treat patients with early stage breast cancer, which demands accurate tumor and target delineations. Dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI has been demonstrated valuable in diagnosis, and might be useful to aid segmentation of breast tumor and targets for SBRT. In this study, feasibility of computer-aided segmentation of breast target volumes using DCE-MRI was investigated and compared against physician delineation, considered as reference. Preliminary results of five patients indicated good agreement between computer-aided segmentation and physician delineation.