Conformance criteria for validation of target volume surface reconstructed from delineation

This paper presents two conformance indexes that can be used to measure a similarity between two delineated structures. The authors use the presented conformance indexes for rating the results of Poisson Surface Reconstruction algorithm on real patient datasets. The rating is based on three delineations: original contours created during a standard procedure, reconstructed contours and reference contours created with an extra care by another physician.The chosen conformance indexes compare the delineations in two different forms: as a voxel grid and as a surface mesh. In this paper each of the conformance indexes is calculated in three different modes: the standard mode where all differences between datasets are taken into account and two more measuring how much one dataset exceeds the other. The last two modes are not symmetrical.The proposed conformance indexes allowed us to compare efficiently two delineations. The presented results also allow to state that the use of mesh reconstruction algorithms can improve delineations prepared within a limited time frame.