Affordable realtime respiratory monitoring system for radiation oncology

Managing respiratory motion is essential for accurate external beam radiotherapy of thoracic and abdominal tumors. Surface-guided radiation therapy systems offer precise respiratory motion monitoring, albeit being often expensive and complex. Cost-effective optical imaging technology could increase accessibility to accurate respiratory monitoring in radiotherapy.

A realtime respiratory monitoring system was developed using off-the-shelf depth camera and custom software. The system tracks a superficial surrogate in three dimensions using depth and optical data. Initial testing involved tracking rigid phantoms in static and dynamic scenarios. 1D sinusoidal motion of various amplitudes was used as ground truth to assess system performance at different distances from the camera. 3D-motion was tracked concomitantly with the proposed system and a clinical surface imaging system. System accuracy against nominal motion was evaluated using Pearson correlation (r), tracking success rate (TSR), and mean absolute error (MAE). Bland-Altman analysis assessed agreement with the clinical system in the absence of ground truth.

The system accurately measured static targets, with depth errors of 0.03 ± 0.13 mm at 560 mm and 0.65 ± 0.61 mm at 1120 mm. For vertical 1D-motion, TSR (≤1 mm) was 100% at 560 mm and 98.7% at 1120 mm; longitudinal TSR ranged from 92% to 50% as distance increased. Pearson correlation remained > 0.98, except at distances ≥980 mm and amplitudes ≤5 mm. Mean errors were consistently ≤1 mm, with minimal bias and narrow limits of agreement in Bland-Altman analysis compared to the clinical system.

The proposed system demonstrates suitability for realtime respiratory motion monitoring in radiotherapy, while minimizing the implementation costs.