This collection contains FDG-PET/CT and radiotherapy planning CT imaging data of 300 patients from four different institutions in Québec with histologically proven head-and-neck cancer (H&N) All patients had pre-treatment FDG-PET/CT scans between April 2006 and November 2014, and within a median of 18 days (range: 6-66) before treatment (Note: date in the TCIA images have been changed in the interest of deidentification; the same change was applied across all images, preserving the time intervals between serial scans).
For 93 of the 300 patients (31 %), the radiotherapy contours were directly drawn on the CT of the FDG-PET/CT scan by expert radiation oncologists and thereafter used for treatment planning. For 207 of the 300 patients (69 %), the radiotherapy contours were drawn on a different CT scan dedicated to treatment planning and were propagated/resampled to the FDG-PET/CT scan reference frame using intensity-based free-form deformable registration with the software MIM® (MIM software Inc., Cleveland, OH).
Patients with recurrent H&N cancer or with metastases at presentation, and patients receiving palliative treatment were excluded from the study. From the 300 patients, 48 received radiation alone (16 %) and 252 received chemo-radiation (84 %) with curative intent as part of treatment management. The median follow-up period of all patients was 43 months (range: 6-112). Patients that did not develop a locoregional recurrence or distant metastases during the follow-up period and that had a follow-up time smaller than 24 months were also excluded from the study. During the follow-up period, 45 patients developed a locoregional recurrence (15 %), 40 patients developed distant metastases (13 %) and 56 patients died (19 %). Further information specific to each patient cohort (e.g. treatment details, image scanning protocols, etc.) is available in the following study:
Vallières, M. et al. Radiomics strategies for risk assessment of tumour failure in head-and-neck cancer. Sci Rep 7, 10117 (2017). doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-10371-5
In our study, we analyzed the FDG-PET and CT images of the 300 patients from four different cohorts for the risk assessment of locoregional recurrences (LR) and distant metastases in H&N cancer. Prediction models combining radiomic and clinical variables were constructed via random forests and imbalance-adjustment strategies using two of the four cohorts. Independent validation of the prediction and prognostic performance of the models was carried out on the other two cohorts (LR: AUC = 0.69 and CI = 0.67; DM: AUC = 0.86 and CI = 0.88). Furthermore, the results obtained via Kaplan-Meier analysis demonstrated the potential of radiomics for assessing the risk of specific tumour outcomes using multiple stratification groups.
See the DOI below for more details and links to access the whole dataset. Please contact Martin Vallières (mart.vallieres@gmail.com) of the Medical Physics Unit of McGill University for any scientific inquiries about this dataset. UPDATE: Errors were found in the initial data curation for the HN-HGJ-068 and HN-CHUS-079 patients. These patients were thus removed from this collection, which now contains a total of 298 patients.
