Performing large-scale three-dimensional radiation dose reconstruction for patients requires a large amount of manual work. We present an image processing-based pipeline to automatically reconstruct radiation dose. The pipeline was designed for childhood cancer survivors that received abdominal radiotherapy with anterior-to-posterior and posterior-to-anterior field set-up. First, anatomical landmarks are automatically identified on two-dimensional radiographs. Second, these landmarks are used to derive parameters to emulate the geometry of the plan on a surrogate computed tomography. Finally, the plan is emulated and used as input for dose calculation. For qualitative evaluation, 100 cases of automatic and manual plan emulations were assessed by two experienced radiation dosimetrists in a blinded comparison. The two radiation dosimetrists approved 100%/100% and 92%/91% of the automatic/manual plan emulations, respectively. Similar approval rates of 100% and 94% hold when the automatic pipeline is applied on another 50 cases. Further, quantitative comparisons resulted in on average <5 mm difference in plan isocenter/borders, and <0.9 Gy in organ mean dose (prescribed dose: 14.4 Gy) calculated from the automatic and manual plan emulations. No statistically significant difference in terms of dose reconstruction accuracy was found for most organs at risk. Ultimately, our automatic pipeline results are of sufficient quality to enable effortless scaling of dose reconstruction data generation. ... Read more

In retrospective radiation treatment (RT) dosimetry, a surrogate anatomy is often used for patients without 3D CT. To gain insight in what the crucial aspects in a surrogate anatomy are to enable accurate dose reconstruction, we investigated the relation of patient characteristics and internal anatomical features with deviations in reconstructed organ dose using surrogate patient's CT scans. Abdominal CT scans of 35 childhood cancer patients (age: 2.1-5.6 yr; 17 boys, 18 girls) undergoing RT during 2004-2016 were included. Based on whether an intact right or left kidney is present in the CT scan, two groups were formed each containing 24 patients. From each group, four CTs associated with Wilms' tumor RT plans with an anterior-posterior - posterior-anterior field setup were selected as references. For each reference, a 2D digitally reconstructed radiograph was computed from the reference CT to simulate a 2D radiographic image and dose reconstruction was performed on the other CTs in the respective group. Deviations in organ mean dose (DE _mean ) of the reconstructions versus the references were calculated, as were deviations in patient characteristics (i.e. age, height, weight) and in anatomical features including organ volume, location (in 3D), and spatial overlaps. Per reference, the Pearson's correlation coefficient between deviations in DE _mean and patient characteristics/features were studied. Deviation in organ locations and DE _mean for the liver, spleen, and right kidney were moderately correlated (R ² ... Read more