Computer aided modeling of anatomic deformation, allowing various techniques and protocols in radiation therapy to be systematically verified and studied, has become increasingly attractive. In this study the potential issues in deformable image registration ͑DIR͒ were analyzed based on two numerical phantoms: One, a synthesized, low intensity gradient prostate image, and the other a lung patient's CT image data set. Each phantom was modeled with region-specific material parameters with its deformation solved using a finite element method. The resultant displacements were used to construct a benchmark to quantify the displacement errors of the Demons and B-Spline-based registrations. The results show that the accuracy of these registration algorithms depends on the chosen parameters, the selection of which is closely associated with the intensity gradients of the underlying images. For the Demons algorithm, both single resolution ͑SR͒ and multiresolution ͑MR͒ registrations required approximately 300 iterations to reach an accuracy of 1.4 mm mean error in the lung patient's CT image ͑and 0.7 mm mean error averaged in the lung only͒. For the low gradient prostate phantom, these algorithms ͑both SR and MR͒ required at least 1600 iterations to reduce their mean errors to 2 mm. For the B-Spline algorithms, best performance ͑mean errors of 1.9 mm for SR and 1.6 mm for MR, respectively͒ on the low gradient prostate was achieved using five grid nodes in each direction. Adding more grid nodes resulted in larger errors. For the lung patient's CT data set, the B-Spline registrations required ten grid nodes in each direction for highest accuracy ͑1.4 mm for SR and 1.5 mm for MR͒. The numbers of iterations or grid nodes required for optimal registrations depended on the intensity gradients of the underlying images. In summary, the performance of the Demons and B-Spline registrations have been quantitatively evaluated using numerical phantoms. The results show that parameter selection for optimal accuracy is closely related to the intensity gradients of the underlying images. Also, the result that the DIR algorithms produce much lower errors in heterogeneous lung regions relative to homogeneous ͑low intensity gradient͒ regions, suggests that feature-based evaluation of deformable image registration accuracy must be viewed cautiously.

Use of DIR-based contour propagation in the routine clinical setting is expected to increase the efficiency of H&N replanning, reducing the amount of time needed for manual target and organ delineations.

This paper presents a new concept to automatically detect the neighborhood in an image where deformable registration is mis-performing. Specifically, the displacement vector field (DVF) from a deformable image registration is substituted into a finite-element-based elastic framework to calculate unbalanced energy in each element. The value of the derived energy indicates the quality of the DVF in its neighborhood. The new voxel-based evaluation approach is compared with three other validation criteria: landmark measurement, a finite element approach and visual comparison, for deformable registrations performed with the optical-flow-based 'demons' algorithm as well as thin-plate spline interpolation. This analysis was performed on three pairs of prostate CT images. The results of the analysis show that the four criteria give mutually comparable quantitative assessments on the six registration instances. As an objective concept, the unbalanced energy presents no requirement on boundary constraints in its calculation, different from traditional mechanical modeling. This method is automatic, and at voxel level suitable to evaluate deformable registration in a clinical setting.

This paper proposes a Monte Carlo-based energy and mass congruent mapping (EMCM) method to calculate the dose on deforming anatomy. Different from dose interpolation methods, EMCM separately maps each voxel's deposited energy and mass from a source image to a reference image with a displacement vector field (DVF) generated by deformable image registration (DIR). EMCM was compared with other dose mapping methods: energy-based dose interpolation (EBDI) and trilinear dose interpolation (TDI). These methods were implemented in EGSnrc/DOSXYZnrc, validated using a numerical deformable phantom and compared for clinical CT images. On the numerical phantom with an analytically invertible deformation map, EMCM mapped the dose exactly the same as its analytic solution, while EBDI and TDI had average dose errors of 2.5% and 6.0%. For a lung patient's IMRT treatment plan, EBDI and TDI differed from EMCM by 1.96% and 7.3% in the lung patient's entire dose region, respectively. As a 4D Monte Carlo dose calculation technique, EMCM is accurate and its speed is comparable to 3D Monte Carlo simulation. This method may serve as a valuable tool for accurate dose accumulation as well as for 4D dosimetry QA.