Reply to the Comments on “Comparative Study with New Accuracy Metrics for Target Volume Contouring in PET Image Guided Radiation Therapy”

Author

Shepherd, T.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Oncology & Radiotherapy, Turku Univ. Hosp., Turku, Finland

Volume

32

Issue

6

fYear

2013

fDate

Jun-13

Firstpage

1148

Lastpage

1149

Abstract

This communication is submitted in response to the letter of van den Hoff and Hofheinz (2013). Based on findings in their earlier study (Hofheinz , 2010) the letter criticizes the use of a physical positron emission tomography (PET) phantom with “cold wall” volumes of interest, in part of the evaluation of PET segmentation tools in our experiment reported in this issue (Shepherd , 2012). In addition, the letter raises concerns about the low number of independent expert (manual) delineations used in Shepherd , (2012) to assess accuracy of tumor segmentation in patient images, and disambiguates the details of one of the segmentation methods involved in Shepherd , (2012).

Keywords

image segmentation; medical image processing; phantoms; positron emission tomography; radiation therapy; tumours; PET image guided radiation therapy; PET segmentation tools; cold wall interest volume; comparative study; independent expert delineation; patient images; physical positron emission tomography phantom; segmentation methods; target volume contouring; tumor segmentation accuracy; Accuracy; Image segmentation; Imaging phantoms; Manuals; Measurement; Phantoms; Positron emission tomography; Image segmentation; performance evaluation; phantoms; positron emission tomography (PET); Humans; Positron-Emission Tomography; Radiotherapy, Image-Guided;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Medical Imaging, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0278-0062

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TMI.2012.2230446

Filename

6365315