Evaluating auto-contouring accuracy in reduced CT dose images for radiopharmaceutical therapies: Denoising and evaluation of 177Lu DOTATATE therapy dataset

IF 2 4区医学 Q3 RADIOLOGY, NUCLEAR MEDICINE & MEDICAL IMAGING

Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics Pub Date : 2025-03-02 DOI:10.1002/acm2.70066

Hung-Te Yang, Kuan-Yin Ko, Ching-Ching Yang

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Abstract

Purpose

Reducing radiation dose attributed to computed tomography (CT) may compromise the accuracy of organ segmentation, an important step in ¹⁷⁷Lu DOTATATE therapy that affects both activity and mass estimates. This study aimed to facilitate CT dose reduction using deep learning methods for patients undergoing serial single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)/CT imaging during ¹⁷⁷Lu DOTATATE therapy.

Methods

The ¹⁷⁷Lu DOTATATE patient dataset hosted in Deep Blue Data was used in this study. The noise insertion method incorporating the effect of bowtie filter, automatic exposure control, and electronic noise was applied to simulate images at four reduced dose levels. Organ segmentation was carried out using the TotalSegmentator model, while image denoising was performed with the DenseNet model. The impact of segmentation performance on the dosimetry accuracy of ¹⁷⁷Lu DOTATATE therapy was quantified by calculating the percent difference between a dose rate map segmented with a reference mask and the same dose rate map segmented with a test mask (PD_dose) for spleen, right kidney, left kidney, and liver.

Results

Before denoising, the mean ± standard deviation of PD_dose for all critical organs were 2.31 ± 2.94%, 4.86 ± 9.42%, 8.39 ± 14.76%, 12.95 ± 19.99% in CT images at dose levels down to 20%, 10%, 5%, 2.5% of the normal dose, respectively. After denoising, the corresponding results were 1.69 ± 2.25%, 2.84 ± 4.46%, 3.72 ± 4.22%, 7.98 ± 15.05% in CT images at dose levels down to 20%, 10%, 5%, 2.5% of the normal dose, respectively.

Conclusion

As dose reduction increased, CT image segmentation gradually deteriorated, which in turn deteriorated the dosimetry accuracy of ¹⁷⁷Lu DOTATATE therapy. Improving CT image quality through denoising could enhance ¹⁷⁷Lu DOTATATE dosimetry, making it a valuable tool to support CT dose reduction for patients undergoing serial SPECT/CT imaging during treatment.

Abstract Image

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评估用于放射性药物治疗的降低 CT 剂量图像的自动轮廓准确性：对 177Lu DOTATATE 治疗数据集进行去噪和评估。

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来源期刊

Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics 医学-核医学

CiteScore

3.60

自引率

19.00%

发文量

331

审稿时长

3 months

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