Atlas-based auto-segmentation for delineating the heart and cardiac substructures in breast cancer radiation therapy.

BACKGROUND This study aimed to develop and validate an automatic multi-atlas segmentation method for delineating the heart and substructures in breast cancer radiation therapy (RT). MATERIAL AND METHODS The atlas database consisted of non-contrast-enhanced planning CT scans from 42 breast cancer patients, each with one manual delineation of the heart and 22 cardiac substructures. Half of the patients were scanned during free-breathing, the rest...