  Pediatric central nervous system tumors are the leading cause of
cancer-related deaths in children. The five-year survival rate for high-grade
glioma in children is less than 20%. The development of new treatments is
dependent upon multi-institutional collaborative clinical trials requiring
reproducible and accurate centralized response assessment. We present the
results of the BraTS-PEDs 2023 challenge, the first Brain Tumor Segmentation
(BraTS) challenge focused on pediatric brain tumors. This challenge utilized
data acquired from multiple international consortia dedicated to pediatric
neuro-oncology and clinical trials. BraTS-PEDs 2023 aimed to evaluate
volumetric segmentation algorithms for pediatric brain gliomas from magnetic
resonance imaging using standardized quantitative performance evaluation
metrics employed across the BraTS 2023 challenges. The top-performing AI
approaches for pediatric tumor analysis included ensembles of nnU-Net and Swin
UNETR, Auto3DSeg, or nnU-Net with a self-supervised framework. The BraTSPEDs
2023 challenge fostered collaboration between clinicians (neuro-oncologists,
neuroradiologists) and AI/imaging scientists, promoting faster data sharing and
the development of automated volumetric analysis techniques. These advancements
could significantly benefit clinical trials and improve the care of children
with brain tumors.
