Research on clinical information and radiomics feature-guided adaptive radiation therapy for personalized medicine for head and neck cancer

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 21K07692
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 52040:Radiological sciences-related
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: Takeda Ken 東北大学, 医学系研究科, 教授 (60312568)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 角谷 倫之 東北大学, 大学病院, 助教 (20604961)
• Project Period (FY): 2021-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 放射線治療 / 適応放射線治療 / 頭頚部癌 / ラジオミクス特徴量

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Adaptive radiation therapy (ART), which responds appropriately to anatomical changes during radiotherapy for head and neck cancer and delivers appropriate irradiation to the lesion and avoids excessive irradiation to normal tissue, requires careful consideration of the timing, frequency, and priority of ART. One of the challenge is to select appropriately the targeted cases of ART. Based on the radiomics of cancer lesions on medical images and clinical information before the start of treatment, the head and neck volume reduction during the irradiation period is predicted and used to select ART cases. This retrospective study suggest that changes in head and neck volume can be predicted using a model based on clinical factors and radiomics features of gross tumor volume, indicating the possibility of assisting in the selection of ART priority cases for head and neck cancer. This result was reported in the academic journal.

Free Research Field

放射線治療学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

頭頚部癌の放射線治療期間内に線量分布上、軽視できない解剖学的変化を来すことがある。対策として治療計画を適宜修正する適応放射線治療(adaptive radiotherapy: ART)の有用性が提唱されているが全症例に対して行うのは困難であり、ART優先症例を事前に特定することが重要である。然し、ARTの優先症例特定や最適な施行時期等については不明な点が多い。本研究では、照射期間中の頭頚部体積変化に着目し、臨床情報と肉眼的腫瘍体積のラジオミクス特徴量を組み合わせたモデルにより、頭頸部体積が著しく縮小する症例を予測できる可能性を示した。本成果は頭頚部癌に対するART優先症例選択の一助となり得る。