ArticleFrontiers in oncology2026
Quantitative assessment of inter-observer consistency in target volume delineation following breast-conserving surgery and mastectomy.
Article in Frontiers in oncology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Background: Consistent clinical target volume (CTV) delineation is vital for breast cancer radiotherapy. While organs-at-risk definitions are increasingly automated, manual CTV delineation of complex post-surgical volumes remains highly observer-dependent, potentially compromising treatment homogeneity. Objective: To quantify inter-observer discrepancies in postoperative breast cancer CTV contouring among regional oncologists and to qualitatively analyze the reasons for these contouring discrepancies to promote standardization and quality assurance. Methods: Based on CT datasets of two representative post-surgical breast cancer cases (BCS and MRM), 22 frontline radiation oncologists from regional municipal hospitals independently contoured the required CTVs. Inter-observer contouring discrepancies across these manual target volumes were quantitatively evaluated via Dice similarity coefficients (DSC) and Hausdorff distances (HD) against a consensus reference standard established through a two-expert consensus workflow. Results: A total of 20 completed datasets, each for both the BCS and MRM cases, were successfully retrieved and analyzed. The large volumes achieved the highest overlap ( Conclusion: Delineation consistency is acceptable for large volumes (
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