Head & Neck IMRT Contours

[AlphaBetaRatio]

Hey Everyone,

I'm trying to find a good paper that outlines how the larynx and pharyngeal constrictors should be contoured for head & neck IMRT. I think the author who usually is quoted for pioneering this line of work is Eisbruch.

I know it seems easy to contour the larynx, but a recent paper by Feng et al. in Red Journal pointed out that there's actually wide variation for how Rad/Oncs contour the normal head and neck structures including the parotid, submandi glands, larynx, and constrictors.

Thanks!

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[medgator]

There's going to be some variability in contouring anywhere you look, regardless of the disease site.

I think the way the RTOG did the Ano-rectal atlas was interesting (not sure if other atlases were done similarly). They essentially have a page with all of the contours from all of the experts and then they used an algorithm to generate the consensus contours:

http://www.rtog.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=DgflROvKQ6w=&tabid=231

It would be nice if we had some H&N atlases available from RTOG that addressed things like the parotids, constrictors etc.

 

[gmsquid]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20646872