Evaluation of the impact of teaching on delineation variation during a virtual stereotactic ablative radiotherapy contouring workshop

Abstract

Introduction: Variation in delineation of target volumes/organs at risk (OARs) is well recognised in radiotherapy and may be reduced by several methods including teaching. We evaluated the impact of teaching on contouring variation for thoracic/pelvic stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) during a virtual contouring workshop. Materials and methods: Target volume/OAR contours produced by workshop participants for three cases were evaluated against reference contours using DICE similarity coefficient (DSC) and line domain error (LDE) metrics. Pre- and post-workshop DSC results were compared using Wilcoxon signed ranks test to determine the impact of teaching during the workshop. Results: Of 50 workshop participants, paired pre- and post-workshop contours were available for 21 (42%), 20 (40%) and 22 (44%) participants for primary lung cancer, pelvic bone metastasis and pelvic node metastasis cases, respectively. Statistically significant improvements post-workshop in median DSC and LDE results were observed for 6 (50%) and 7 (58%) of 12 structures, respectively, although the magnitude of DSC/LDE improvement was modest in most cases. An increase in median DSC post-workshop ≥0·05 was only observed for GTVbone, IGTVlung and SacralPlex, and reduction in median LDE > 1 mm was only observed for GTVbone, CTVbone and SacralPlex. Post-workshop, median DSC values were >0·7 for 75% of structures. For 92% of the structures, post-workshop contours were considered to be acceptable or within acceptable variation following review by the workshop faculty. Conclusions: This study has demonstrated that virtual SABR contouring training is feasible and was associated with some improvements in contouring variation for multiple target volumes/OARs.

Cultivating Excellence: Unraveling the Nexus of Female Leadership, Organizational Culture, and Lecturer Performance Private Universities

“…The phenomenon that occurs is that lecturers' duties are quite burdensome, making it challenging for tertiary institutions, especially private universities in the city of Tangerang, to consistently maintain quality work over an extended period (Veithzal Rivai, 2011). This condition is further exacerbated by the inadequacies of private universities in providing welfare and enhancing campus facilities and infrastructure (Slevin et al, 2023). To address the issue of low lecturer performance, we require a leader who can serve as an example for lecturers to improve their performance.…”