An integrated model-driven method for in-treatment upper airway motion tracking using cine MRI in head and neck radiation therapy

Abstract

The proposed motion tracking method can provide accurate upper airway motion tracking results, and enable automatic and quantitative identification and analysis of in-treatment H&N upper airway motion. By integrating explicit and implicit linked-shape representations within a hierarchical model-fitting process, the proposed tracking method can process complex H&N structures and low-contrast/resolution cine MRI images. Future research will focus on the improvement of method reliability, patient motion pattern analysis for providing more information on patient-specific prediction of structure displacements, and motion effects on dosimetry for better H&N motion management in radiation therapy.

Motion management strategies and technical issues associated with stereotactic body radiotherapy of thoracic and upper abdominal tumors: A review from NRG oncology

“…Among other factors, the absence of ionizing radiation using MRI has facilitated the application of cine MRI for the development of motion models in several different treatment sites including the abdomen, thorax, liver, breast, and rectum among other sites. The emergence of online MRI‐guided radiation delivery has also permitted the increased utilization of cine MRI techniques for real‐time motion assessment and the construction of motion models …”

“…The emergence of online MRI-guided radiation delivery has also permitted the increased utilization of cine MRI techniques for real-time motion assessment and the construction of motion models. 57…”

An adaptive Fuzzy C-means method utilizing neighboring information for breast tumor segmentation in ultrasound images

“…Actually, the definition measuring the similarity between the two sets was used to evaluate segmentation results . This improved standard Euclid distance based segmentation, which may also be potentially useful for segmenting images from other modalities …”

“…40,41 This improved standard Euclid distance based segmentation, 42 which may also be potentially useful for segmenting images from other modalities. [43][44][45] Regarding the FCM based segmentations of the breast tumors, most studies were aimed for MR images, for example, FCM based adaptive k-means cluster to segment breast tissue MR images. 46 With respect to US imaging of breast tumors, Xu and Nishimura (2009) proposed a structure tensor-based method.…”

Evaluation of automatic contour propagation in T2‐weighted 4DMRI for normal‐tissue motion assessment using internal organ‐at‐risk volume (IRV)

“…Automatic contour propagation using deformable image registration (DIR) was reported for 4DCT‐based respiratory motion assessment,27, 28, 29 CT‐based longitudinal adaptive evaluation,30, 31, 32 and cone‐beam CT for setup with liver matching 33. Other automatic image segmentation approaches were reported,34, 35 including model‐based method. Recently, automatic OAR contouring on 2D cine or 3D MR images were reported to facilitate MR‐based planning or MR‐guided radiotherapy 36, 37, 38, 39.…”