End-to-end workflow for finite element analysis of tumor treating fields in glioblastomas.

End-to-end workflow for finite element analysis of tumor treating fields in glioblastomas. Phys Med Biol. 2017 Oct 12;62(21):8264-8282 Authors: Timmons JJ, Lok E, San P, Bui K, Wong ET Abstract Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) therapy is an approved modality of treatment for glioblastoma. Patient anatomy-based finite element analysis (FEA) has the potential to reveal not only how these fields affect tumor control but also how to improve efficacy. While the automated tools for segmentation speed up the generation of FEA models, multi-step manual corrections are required, including removal of disconnected voxels, incorporation of unsegmented structures and the addition of 36 electrodes plus gel layers matching the TTFields transducers. Existing approaches are also not scalable for the high throughput analysis of large patient volumes. A semi-automated workflow was developed to prepare FEA models for TTFields mapping in the human brain. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) pre-processing, segmentation, electrode and gel placement, and post-processing were all automated. The material properties of each tissue were applied to their corresponding mask in silico using COMSOL Multiphysics (COMSOL, Burlington, MA, USA). The fidelity of the segmentations with and without post-processing was compared against the full semi-automated segmentation workflow approach using Dice coefficient analysis. The average relative differences for the electric fiel...
Source: Physics in Medicine and Biology - Category: Physics Authors: Tags: Phys Med Biol Source Type: research