SlicerRT: radiation therapy research toolkit for 3D Slicer.

Area of Science:

• Medical Physics
• Radiotherapy Research
• Medical Image Analysis

Background:

• Growing interest in adaptive radiation therapy research necessitates advanced software tools.
• Existing software options are often expensive, proprietary, or limited in scope and support.
• There is a need for a customizable, free, and open-source toolkit for radiation therapy research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce SlicerRT, a novel, open-source software toolkit designed for radiation therapy research.
• To provide researchers with a platform for fast computations, convenient workflows, and integration of experimental therapeutic approaches.
• To establish an infrastructure for image-guided therapy research and clinical translation.

Main Methods:

• SlicerRT was developed as an extension for the 3D Slicer platform, integrating radiation therapy-specific functionalities.
• Features were determined through consensus with radiation oncologists and medical physicists.
• Development followed 3D Slicer's quality standards, with standardized documentation, distribution, and user support.

Main Results:

• Developed modules for importing DICOM-RT data, calculating dose volume histograms, and creating accumulated dose volumes.
• Enabled comparison of dose volumes and visualization of isodose lines and surfaces.
• Demonstrated the effectiveness of SlicerRT within 3D Slicer for radiation therapy research use cases.

Conclusions:

• A new, open-source software toolkit, SlicerRT, has been created for radiation therapy research.
• SlicerRT facilitates the import, visualization, analysis, and comparison of treatment plans within 3D Slicer.
• The toolkit offers extensively tested algorithms accessible via a graphical user interface and an application programming interface.