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Autostent: A Semi-Automated Approach to Designing Customized 3D-Printed Oral Radiation Stents for Patients with Head and Neck Cancer

Agrawal, A.; Zaid, M. M.; Roach, M. A.; Xiao, L.; Chambers, M. S.; Koay, E. J.

2023-09-27 radiology and imaging
10.1101/2023.09.26.23296170 medRxiv
Show abstract

Oral stents may reduce toxicities during radiation therapy for head and neck cancer (HNC). Although customized 3D-printed oral stents are more quickly fabricated and non-inferior (in terms of patient reported outcomes) compared to conventionally-fabricated stents, the design process is still relatively time-consuming, unstandardized, and requires experienced technicians. We hypothesized that semi-automating the 3D-printed stent design process can reduce design time and standardize the workflow. Using oral stent design principles established over decades by oral oncologists, we developed a customized computer program (Autostent) using MATLAB to semi-automate the design process. We then compared a previously described method utilizing non-automated computer-aided design with Autostent. Three users designed stents for four patients with HNC enrolled on a prospective observational study. These patients were selected based on differing dental anatomies, and each user designed stents for each patient thrice, using both the non- and semi-automated methods. The design time and stent volumes for the two methods were statistically analyzed. Semi-automation was found to significantly reduce the average design time by 23.6 minutes (51.2%, p=0.001), independent of user, dental anatomy, and trial number. Additionally, semi-automation reduced the average stent volume by 4.33 mL (12.9%, p=0.016, univariate analysis). While this was not statistically significant after accounting for the other experimental variables (p=0.40, multivariate analysis), semi-automation did reduce the variability in the stent volume across users (overall standard error of the mean reduced by 40%). Thus, the semi-automated workflow significantly reduced the design time and the variability in the stent volume across users compared to the non-automated workflow. This may lead to potential cost benefits, standardization of the device, and increased population-wide access to a device that could help reduce toxicities for HNC.

Published in Radiation Oncology · not in our set (fewer than 10 published preprints to learn from) · training set

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