Comparison of Deep Learning Models for fast and accurate dose map prediction in Microbeam Radiation Therapy.
Authors
Affiliations (11)
Affiliations (11)
- Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy; INFN Section of Rome, Rome, Italy. Electronic address: [email protected].
- School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia.
- Centre for Medical Radiation Physics, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia.
- Formerly Department of Physics, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany.
- Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
- Australian Synchrotron, ANSTO, Clayton, Australia.
- Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy; INFN Section of Rome, Rome, Italy.
- Centre for Medical Radiation Physics, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia; Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, NSW 2031, Australia.
- Centre for Medical Radiation Physics, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia; Australian Synchrotron, ANSTO, Clayton, Australia.
- Centre for Medical Radiation Physics, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia; Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia.
- School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia; Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia.
Abstract
Microbeam Radiation Therapy (MRT) is an innovative radiotherapy modality which uses highly focused synchrotron-generated X-ray microbeams. Current pre-clinical research in MRT mostly rely on Monte Carlo (MC) simulations for dose estimation, which are highly accurate but computationally intensive. Recently, Deep Learning (DL) dose engines have been proved effective in generating fast and reliable dose distributions in different RT modalities. However, relatively few studies compare different models on the same task. This work aims to compare a Graph-Convolutional-Network-based DL model, developed in the context of Very High Energy Electron RT, to the Convolutional 3D U-Net that we recently implemented for MRT dose predictions. The two DL solutions are trained with 3D dose maps, generated with the MC-Toolkit Geant4, in rats used in MRT pre-clinical research. The models are evaluated against Geant4 simulations, used as ground truth, and are assessed in terms of Mean Absolute Error, Mean Relative Error, and a voxel-wise version of the γ-index. Also presented are specific comparisons of predictions in relevant tumor regions, tissues boundaries and air pockets. The two models are finally compared from the perspective of the execution time and size. This study finds that the two models achieve comparable overall performance. Main differences are found in their dosimetric accuracy within specific regions, such as air pockets, and their respective inference times. Consequently, the choice between models should be guided primarily by data structure and time constraints, favoring the graph-based method for its flexibility or the 3D U-Net for its faster execution.