Objectives: Our objective was to develop and evaluate a locally trained knowledge-based planning (KBP) model for head and neck (H at the patient level, no fully patient-independent validation cohort was available. RapidPlan maintained target coverage while reducing OAR doses, including oral cavity Dmean (−7.62%Rx; 95% CI: −8.91 to −6.32; p < 0.001) and larynx Dmean (−7.57%Rx; 95% CI: −9.14 to −6.00; p < 0.001). The same direction of benefit was observed in the plan-level held-out subset. MU did not increase with RapidPlan and decreased from 764.2 ± 275.5 to 695.8 ± 210.3 MU (Delta = −68.4 MU; 95% CI: −89.4 to −47.4; p < 0.001). Conclusions: A high R2 was not required for clinically useful optimization objectives in this heterogeneous cohort. However, the retrospective design and patient-level overlap limit claims of full generalizability. The model should therefore be interpreted as a clinically useful standardization and decision-support tool requiring expert review rather than as a replacement for the judgment of physicists and radiation oncologists.
Janiszewska et al. (Thu,) studied this question.