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US 12,002,216 B2Granted
Automatic quality checks for radiotherapy contouring
AssigneeSiemens Healthineers International AG
InventorsThomas Albrecht, Peter Hess, Nawal Houhou
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Systems, devices, methods, and computer processing products for automatically checking for errors in segmentation (contouring) using heuristic and/or statistical evaluation methods.
Claims15
A method for evaluating quality of segmentation of an anatomical structure in a radiological image, comprising:
- receiving a set of rules to be used to evaluate the segmented structure;
- determining the rules that are appropriate to be used to evaluate the segmented structure;
- selecting the appropriate rules for execution;
- determining order of execution of the selected rules;
- and
- applying the selected rules in the determined order to check the quality of the segmentation in the image,
- wherein the segmentation is determined to fail quality check when one or more of the selected rules are violated,
- wherein the rules include heuristic rules and statistical rules,
- the heuristic rules include rules that require that the structure be inside the segmentation in an image, that the segmented structure not overlap with another structure in the image, that the segmentation in the image be a single connected contour, that a length, volume, or shape of the structure be in a predefined range, that gross tumor volume structures be completely covered by at least one planning target volume structures, and that clinical target volume structures be completely covered by at least one planning target volume structures, and
- wherein Boolean operators and pixel/voxel counting or a 3D connectivity labeling process is applied to determine whether the heuristic rules are violated.
7 more elements
A system for evaluating quality of segmentation of an anatomical structure in a radiological image, comprising:
- a computer processing system including:
- a database configured to store a plurality of segmentation evaluation rules;
- a user input device;
- and
- a display device,
- the computer processing device configured to:
- determine the evaluation rules appropriate to be used to evaluate the segmented structure;
- select the evaluation rules for execution;
- determine order of execution of the selected evaluation rules;
- and
- apply the selected evaluation rules in the determined order to evaluate a quality of the segmentation in the image,
- wherein the segmentation is determined to fail quality check when one or more of the selected evaluation rules are violated,
- wherein the rules include heuristic rules and statistical rules,
- the heuristic rules include rules that require that the structure be inside the segmentation in an image, that the segmented structure not overlap with another structure in the image, that the segmentation in the image be a single connected contour, that a length, volume, or shape of the structure be in a predefined range, that gross tumor volume structures be completely covered by at least one planning target volume structures, and that clinical target volume structures be completely covered by at least one planning target volume structures, and
- wherein Boolean operators and pixel/voxel counting or a 3D connectivity labeling process is applied to determine whether the heuristic rules are violated.
12 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.