Publication

Abstract : Automated radiotherapy treatment planning aims to improve treatment accuracy and efficiency. However, the prevalent Knowledge-Based Planning (KBP) method faces issues like lengthy manual problem formulation and challenges in accurately modeling human anatomy and processing high-dimensional data. This work focuses on treatment plan optimization and considers deep learning as a potential solution. Deep learning algorithms, by virtue of their ability to learn from large quantities of data and model complex relationships, can automate the formulation of the optimization problem in KBP, saving significant time and effort. However, despite these compelling advantages, it should be noted that the current convolution-based encoder-decoder models used for radiotherapy treatment plan optimization have a limited capability in capturing long-range dependencies between distant voxels. This work aims to introduce 'DE-ConvGraph 3D UNet', a novel deep learning model, to address these limitations and optimize radiotherapy treatment plans for oropharyngeal cancer. The proposed 'DE-ConvGraph 3D UNet' model includes a Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) component to capture long-range dependencies between distant voxels. Furthermore, the dual-encoder structure of the model combines the strengths of GCN and 3D Convolutional U-Net, enabling global relationships and local pattern capturing in a 3D patient volume. Experiments were conducted using the benchmark dataset-OpenKBP-Opt. The proposed model shows improvements in performance in comparison to state-of-The-Art U-Net variants in terms of mean squared voxel-wise error, dose volume histogram points and clinical criteria satisfaction. © 2023 IEEE.