Feasibility of Using a Novel Automatic Cardiac Segmentation Algorithm in the Clinical Routine of Lung Cancer Patients

Incidental irradiation of the heart in patients with lung cancer treated with RT produces proven cardiotoxic effects positively correlating with the absorbed dose. With the introduction of targeted therapies, the survival of lung cancer patients is increasing, resulting in higher risk to develop radiation induced cardiac toxicity. It has therefore become paramount to introduce in the clinical routine efficient methods to properly manage heart motion, which is the main reason for misdosage. In this work we introduce and validate an automatic heart segmentation algorithm on 4D CT scans, and we compare the union of its contours on all the respiratory bins with the contour of the maximum intensity projection (MIP), which is currently the most advanced clinical approach to the problem in treatment planning.