Purpose
The aim here is to report on the development of a standardized target and organ at risk naming convention for use in Radiation Therapy and to present the nomenclature for structure naming for inter-institutional data sharing, clinical trial repositories, integrated multi-institutional collaborative databases and quality control centers. This taxonomy should also enable improved plan benchmarking between clinical institutions and vendors and facilitation of automated treatment plan quality control.
Materials and Methods
The Advanced Technology Consortium (ATC), Washington University in St.Louis, Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG), Dutch Radiation Oncology Society (NVRO) and the Clinical Trials RT QA Harmonization Group collaborated in creating this new naming convention. The ICRU guidelines have been used to create standardized nomenclature for target volumes (CTV, ITV, PTV etc.), organs at risk (OAR), and planning organ at risk volumes (PRVs) in radiation therapy. The nomenclature also includes rules for specifying laterality and margins for various structures. The naming rules distinguish tumor and nodal PTVs, with correspondence to their respective tumor/nodal CTVs. It also provides rules for basic structure naming, as well as an option for more detailed names. Names of non-standard structures used mainly for plan optimization or evaluation (rings, islands of dose avoidance, islands where additional dose is needed (dose painting)) are identified separately.
Results
In addition to its use in 16 ongoing RTOG advanced technology clinical trial protocols and several new EORTC protocols, a pilot version of this naming convention has been evaluated using patient data sets with varying treatment sites. All structures in these data sets were satisfactorily identified using this nomenclature.
Conclusions
Use of standardized naming conventions is important to facilitate comparison of dosimetry across patient datasets. The guidelines presented here will facilitate international acceptance across a wide range of efforts, including groups organizing clinical trials, ROI, NVRO, IHE-RO, and DICOM.
By exchanging data with treatment planning systems via DICOM-RT files and CERR, and by bringing image registration algorithms closer to radiotherapy applications, DIRART is potentially a convenient and flexible platform that may facilitate ART and DIR research. 0 2011 Ameri-
pZ.029) predicted for spending at least 150s per case. Conclusion: Time spent reviewing each patient's treatment at chart rounds can be measured, and predictors of lengthier discussion characterized. Identification of these factors might facilitate an awareness of cases that might warrant a slower or more deliberate review for quality assurance.
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