AI-enabled point-of-care technology for radiotherapy planning peer review

Background Approximately 50% of cancer patients are offered radiotherapy treatment.

An important part of radiotherapy planning involves delineating (“contouring”) the target to be irradiated; a complex and time-consuming process. As such, the Royal College of Radiologists advocates peer-review of contours to ensure quality. However, peer review is frequently not performed owing to resource constraints.

Aims The aim of this project is to investigate the technical and clinical feasibility of an automatic artificial-peer-review software, a system to screen contouring for potential errors.

The project will aim to find the most appropriate format to deploy the system clinically, and to establish if it is technically feasible to flag likely errors and to provide a clinically useful explanation of why.

Project Plan The clinical feasibility study will be undertaken by the University of Manchester, which will involve two contouring workshops; to gather feedback from clinicians on the design, and subsequently their experience, of the artificial-peer-review concept.

The technical feasibility study will be undertaken by Mirada Medical, who will investigate the viability of encoding contouring guidelines into a deep-learning model to provide feedback. Timelines The project will last 12 months. The first workshop will be held within 3 months, and the second will take place in the final two months.

Impact and Dissemination The project output, which will be the proof-of-concept automatic artificial-peer-review software, will be disseminated by demonstration to the clinicians during the final workshop. The Technical results will be made available in an open access publication. Results will also be made available to the general public via the website radiotherapy and me .

The project will provide evidence to support investment in and development of the concept into a clinical prototype, to further the potential of the technology for longer term clinical benefits.