A preliminary study of using a deep convolution neural network to generate synthesized CT images based on CBCT for adaptive radiotherapy of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

This study aims to utilize a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) for synthesized CT image generation based on cone-beam CT (CBCT) and to apply the images to dose calculations for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). An encoder-decoder 2D U-Net neural network was produced. A total of 70 CBCT/CT paired images of NPC cancer patients were used for training (50), validation (10) and testing (10) datasets. The testing datasets were treated with the same prescription dose (70 Gy to PTVnx70, 68 Gy to PTVnd68, 62 Gy to the PTV62 and 54 Gy to the PTV54). The mean error (ME) and mean absolute error (MAE) for the true CT images were calculated for image quality evaluation of the synthesized CT. The dose-volume histogram (DVH) dose metric difference and 3D gamma pass rate for the true CT images were calculated for dose analysis, and the results were compared with those for the CBCT images (original CBCT images without any correction) and a patient-specific calibration (PSC) method. Compared with CBCT, the range of the MAE for synthesized CT images improved from (60, 120) to (6, 27) Hounsfield units (HU), and the ME improved from (-74, 51) to (-26, 4) HU. Compared with the true CT method, the average DVH dose metric differences for the CBCT, PSC and synthesized CT methods were 0.8% ± 1.9%, 0.4% ± 0.7% and 0.2% ± 0.6%, respectively. The 1%/1 mm gamma pass rates within the body for the CBCT, PSC and synthesized CT methods were 90.8% ± 6.2%, 94.1% ± 4.4% and 95.5% ± 1.6%, respectively, and the rates within the PTVnx70 were 80.3% ± 16.6%, 87.9% ± 19.7%, 98.6% ± 2.9%, respectively. The DCNN model can generate high-quality synthesized CT images from CBCT images and be used for accurate dose calculations for NPC patients. This finding has great significance for the clinical application of adaptive radiotherapy for NPC.