Ross I Berbeco et al 2005 Phys. Med. Biol. 50 4481 doi:10.1088/0031-9155/50/19/004
Ross I Berbeco1, Hassan Mostafavi2, Gregory C Sharp1 and Steve B Jiang1
Show affiliationsDue to the risk of pneumothorax, many clinicians are reluctant to implant radiopaque markers within patients' lungs for the purpose of radiographic or fluoroscopic tumour localization. We propose a method of gated therapy using fluoroscopic information without the implantation of radiopaque markers. The method presented here does not rely on any external motion signal either. Breathing phase information is found by analysing the fluoroscopic intensity fluctuations in the lung. As the lungs fill/empty, the radiological pathlength through them shortens/lengthens, giving brighter/darker fluoroscopic intensities. The phase information is combined with motion-enhanced template matching to turn the beam on when the tumour is in the desired location. A study based on patient data is presented to demonstrate the feasibility of this procedure. The resulting beam-on pattern is similar to that produced by an external gating system. The only discrepancies occur briefly and at the gate edges.
Issue 19 (7 October 2005)
Received 14 October 2004, in final form 6 May 2005
Published 14 September 2005
Ross I Berbeco et al 2005 Phys. Med. Biol. 50 4481
Yanqin Wu and Peter Goldreich 1999 ApJ 519 783
Zbigniew Banach and Wieslaw Larecki 2004 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 37 9805
L. X. Cheng et al. 1998 ApJ 503 809
F Gleisberg et al 2001 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 34 4645
L F Perondi 2005 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 17 S4165
Wende Xiao et al 2002 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 14 6321
F. Grundahl et al. 1999 ApJ 524 242
O Kaneko et al 1978 Plasma Phys. 20 1167
J Villarroel and A G Grandpierre 2005 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 38 2601