ArticleRadiation oncology (London, England)2021
Interobserver variability in target volume delineation in definitive radiotherapy for thoracic esophageal cancer: a multi-center study from China.
Article in Radiation oncology (London, England), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- AI in esophageal cancer: advances, barriers to clinical translation, and perspectives for digital health.Journal of translational medicine · 2026Review
- A human-AI collaborative workflow for improved gross tumor volume delineation in esophageal cancer radiotherapy.BMC medical imaging · 2026Article
- Deep learning-based independent lymph node segmentation in esophageal cancer: a precise and efficient approach for radiotherapy planning.Quantitative imaging in medicine and surgery · 2026Article
- Margin for compensating displacement of adrenal gland metastasis and fiducial marker along with respiratory phase in real-time motion-tracking radiation therapy.Radiological physics and technology · 2025Article
- Contouring aid tools in radiotherapy. Smoothing: the false friend.Clinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico · 2024Article
- Fully-automated, CT-only GTV contouring for palliative head and neck radiotherapy.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Application of radiomics in adrenal incidentaloma: a literature review.Discover oncology · 2022Review
- Inter-Observer and Intra-Observer Variability in Gross Tumor Volume Delineation of Primary Esophageal Carcinomas Based on Different Combinations of Diagnostic Multimodal Images.Frontiers in oncology · 2022Article
- Impact of Regional Lymph Node Irradiation on Reducing Lymph Node Recurrence in Esophageal Cancer Patients.Cancer diagnosis & prognosisArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
41 authors at 15 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
purposeTo investigate the interobserver variability (IOV) in target volume delineation of definitive radiotherapy for thoracic esophageal cancer (TEC) among cancer centers in China, and ultimately improve contouring consistency as much as possible to lay the foundation for multi-center prospective studies.
methodsSixteen cancer centers throughout China participated in this study. In Phase 1, three suitable cases with upper, middle, and lower TEC were chosen, and participants were asked to contour a group of gross tumor volume (GTV-T), nodal gross tumor volume (GTV-N) and clinical target volume (CTV) for each case based on their routine experience. In Phase 2, the same clinicians were instructed to follow a contouring protocol to re-contour another group of target volume. The variation of the target volume was analyzed and quantified using dice similarity coefficient (DSC).
resultsSixteen clinicians provided routine volumes, whereas ten provided both routine and protocol volumes for each case. The IOV of routine GTV-N was the most striking in all cases, with the smallest DSC of 0.37 (95% CI 0.32-0.42), followed by CTV, whereas GTV-T showed high consistency. After following the protocol, the smallest DSC of GTV-N was improved to 0.64 (95% CI 0.45-0.83, P = 0.005) but the DSC of GTV-T and CTV remained constant in most cases.
conclusionVariability in target volume delineation was observed, but it could be significantly reduced and controlled using mandatory interventions.
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