HaN-Seg (The Head and Neck Organ-at-Risk CT & MR Segmentation Challenge)

Cancer in the region of the head and neck (HaN) is one of the most prominent cancers, for which radiotherapy represents an important treatment modality that aims to deliver a high radiation dose to the targeted cancerous cells while sparing the nearby healthy organs-at-risk (OARs). A precise three-dimensional spatial description, i.e. segmentation, of the target volumes as well as OARs is required for optimal radiation dose distribution calculation, which is primarily performed using computed tomography (CT) images. However, the HaN region contains many OARs that are poorly visible in CT, but better visible in magnetic resonance (MR) images. Although attempts have been made towards the segmentation of OARs from MR images, so far there has been no evaluation of the impact the combined analysis of CT and MR images has on the segmentation of OARs in the HaN region. The Head and Neck Organ-at-Risk Multi-Modal Segmentation Challenge aims to promote the development of new and application of existing fully automated techniques for OAR segmentation in the HaN region from CT images that exploit the information of multiple imaging modalities so as to improve the accuracy of segmentation results.