Accuracy in the localization of thoracic and abdominal tumors using respiratory displacement, velocity, and phase

Current four dimensional (4D) computed tomography (CT) reconstruction techniques are retrospectively created based on either the phase or displacement of the respiratory signal. Both techniques have known limitations which cause clinically significant motion artifacts in 4D CT images. These artifacts, which appear as undefined or irregular boundaries in the 4D CT images, cause systematic errors in patient contouring and dose calculations. The aim of this work was to evaluate the reproducibility of tumor position as a function of displacement, phase, and velocity of the respiratory signal, respectively, in order to determine the optimum parameter or combination of parameters to use in order to minimize artifacts in 4D CT images or to accurately deliver radiation to relevant structures during treatment.

Estimated tumor centroid position and respiratory signal data were acquired with the Cyberknife Synchrony system for 26 thoracic radiotherapy patients (52 fractions). A reference respiratory cycle was calculated for each patient. Displacement, phase, and velocity of ten data points were calculated from this reference respiratory cycle, where each point represents an image bin. The corresponding tumor position was then sorted into these image bins if the phase, displacement, simultaneous displacement and phase, or simultaneous displacement and velocity of the respiratory signal were within tolerances of 0.5 mm for displacement and 0.5 mm/s for velocity, respectively, from the corresponding data of the reference cycle for each image bin.

The mean of the standard deviations of tumor positions over all bins and all fractions for the superior-inferior direction were 2.13 +/- 1.01 mm for phase sorting, 1.20 +/- 0.76 mm for displacement sorting, 1.20 +/- 0.71 mm for simultaneous displacement and phase sorting, and 1.10 +/- 0.71 mm for simultaneous displacement and velocity sorting, with maximum deviations of 43.0, 16.1, 15.5, and 14.1 mm for each scenario, respectively. The same trend was observed for the anterior-posterior and left-right directions. A linear dependence was observed between the mean of the standard deviations of tumor positions over all fractions as a function of the velocity of the respiratory signal at each bin for all the sorting scenarios. A substantially larger gradient for the phase sorting scenario, compared to the other scenarios, suggests that tumor localization will become increasingly less accurate as the velocity of the tumor increases during a breathing cycle, e.g., if the amplitude of motion increases while the period of the respiratory cycle stays constant or during mid inhale or exhale phases of the respiratory cycle.

This study illustrates that position of a tumor can be determined more accurately if displacement and velocity are used simultaneously as sorting parameters for 4D CT images or during treatment. A real-time displacement and velocity based 4D CT image sorting method may therefore produce fewer and smaller artifacts in 4D CT images than current retrospective sorting methods.