A novel phantom technique for evaluating the performance of PET auto-segmentation methods in delineating heterogeneous and irregular lesions

摘要

BackgroundPositron Emission Tomography (PET)-based automatic segmentation (PET-AS) methods can improve tumour delineation for radiotherapy treatment planning, particularly for Head and Neck (H&N) cancer. Thorough validation of PET-AS on relevant data is currently needed. Printed subresolution sandwich (SS) phantoms allow modelling heterogeneous and irregular tracer uptake, while providing reference uptake data. This work aimed to demonstrate the usefulness of the printed SS phantom technique in recreating complex realistic H&N radiotracer uptake for evaluating several PET-AS methods.