{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,27]],"date-time":"2026-10-27T20:24:15Z","timestamp":1793132655181,"version":"4.5.0"},"reference-count":25,"publisher":"Springer Science and Business Media LLC","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,31]],"date-time":"2024-07-31T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1722384000000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,31]],"date-time":"2024-07-31T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1722384000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Discov Onc"],"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title><jats:sec>\n                <jats:title>Purpose objective(s)<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>Manual contouring of the prostate region in planning computed tomography (CT) images is a challenging task due to factors such as low contrast in soft tissues, inter- and intra-observer variability, and variations in organ size and shape. Consequently, the use of automated contouring methods can offer significant advantages. In this study, we aimed to investigate automated male pelvic multi-organ contouring in multi-center planning CT images using a hybrid convolutional neural network-vision transformer (CNN-ViT) that combines convolutional and ViT techniques.<\/jats:p>\n              <\/jats:sec><jats:sec>\n                <jats:title>Materials\/methods<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>We used retrospective data from 104 localized prostate cancer patients, with delineations of the clinical target volume (CTV) and critical organs at risk (OAR) for external beam radiotherapy. We introduced a novel attention-based fusion module that merges detailed features extracted through convolution with the global features obtained through the ViT.<\/jats:p>\n              <\/jats:sec><jats:sec>\n                <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>The average dice similarity coefficients (DSCs) achieved by VGG16-UNet-ViT for the prostate, bladder, rectum, right femoral head (RFH), and left femoral head (LFH) were 91.75%, 95.32%, 87.00%, 96.30%, and 96.34%, respectively. Experiments conducted on multi-center planning CT images indicate that combining the ViT structure with the CNN network resulted in superior performance for all organs compared to pure CNN and transformer architectures. Furthermore, the proposed method achieves more precise contours compared to state-of-the-art techniques.<\/jats:p>\n              <\/jats:sec><jats:sec>\n                <jats:title>Conclusion<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>Results demonstrate that integrating ViT into CNN architectures significantly improves segmentation performance. These results show promise as a reliable and efficient tool to facilitate prostate radiotherapy treatment planning.<\/jats:p>\n              <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1007\/s12672-024-01177-9","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,31]],"date-time":"2024-07-31T20:02:29Z","timestamp":1722456149000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":7,"title":["Automated contouring of CTV and OARs in planning CT scans using novel hybrid convolution-transformer networks for prostate cancer radiotherapy"],"prefix":"10.1007","volume":"15","author":[{"given":"Najmeh","family":"Arjmandi","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Shahrokh","family":"Nasseri","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Mehdi","family":"Momennezhad","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Alireza","family":"Mehdizadeh","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Sare","family":"Hosseini","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Shokoufeh","family":"Mohebbi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Amin Amiri","family":"Tehranizadeh","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zohreh","family":"Pishevar","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,7,31]]},"reference":[{"key":"1177_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3390\/DIAGNOSTICS13040667","author":"H Baroudi","year":"2023","unstructured":"Baroudi H, Brock KK, Cao W, Chen X, Chung C, Court LE, El Basha MD, Farhat M, Gay S, Gronberg MP, Gupta AC, Hernandez S, Huang K, Jaffray DA, Lim R, Marquez B, Nealon K, Netherton TJ, Nguyen CM, Reber B, Rhee DJ, Salazar RM, Shanker MD, Sjogreen C, Woodland M, Yang J, Yu C, Zhao Y. Automated contouring and planning in radiation therapy: what is \u2018clinically acceptable? Diagnostics. 2023. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/DIAGNOSTICS13040667.","journal-title":"Diagnostics"},{"key":"1177_CR2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"49","DOI":"10.1016\/J.RADONC.2018.01.014","volume":"127","author":"C Salembier","year":"2018","unstructured":"Salembier C, Villeirs G, De Bari B, Hoskin P, Pieters BR, Van Vulpen M, Khoo V, Henry A, Bossi A, De Meerleer G, Fonteyne V. ESTRO ACROP consensus guideline on CT- and MRI-based target volume delineation for primary radiation therapy of localized prostate cancer. 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The Mashhad University of Medical Sciences Ethics Committee approved the study (Approval ID IR.MUMS.MEDICAL.REC.1399.667) and waived the need for informed consent due to the retrospective nature of the study and the use of anonymized data. All patient data utilized was anonymized during export from the Treatment Planning System (TPS) and obtained from archived PACS data of previously treated patients, ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of all individuals.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Ethics approval and consent to participate"}},{"value":"Not applicable.","order":3,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Consent for publication"}},{"value":"The authors declare no competing interests.","order":4,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Competing interests"}}],"article-number":"323"}}