Feasibility Study of Automated Framework for Estimating Lung Tumor Locations for Target-Based Patient Positioning in Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy

Abstract EN

Objective.

To investigate the feasibility of an automated framework for estimating the lung tumor locations for tumor-based patient positioning with megavolt-cone-beam computed tomography (MV-CBCT) during stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT).

Methods.

A lung screening phantom and ten lung cancer cases with solid lung tumors, who were treated with SBRT, were employed to this study.

The locations of tumors in MV-CBCT images were estimated using a tumor-template matching technique between a tumor template and the MV-CBCT.

Tumor templates were produced by cropping the gross tumor volume (GTV) regions, which were enhanced by a Sobel filter or a blob structure enhancement (BSE) filter.

Reference tumor locations (grand truth) were determined based on a consensus between a radiation oncologist and a medical physicist.

Results.

According to the results of the phantom study, the average Euclidean distances of the location errors in the original, Sobel-filtered, and BSE-filtered images were 2.0 ± 4.1 mm, 12.8 ± 9.4 mm, and 0.4 ± 0.5 mm, respectively.

For clinical cases, these were 3.4 ± 7.1 mm, 7.2 ± 11.6 mm, and 1.6 ± 1.2 mm, respectively.

Conclusion.

The feasibility study suggests that our proposed framework based on the BSE filter may be a useful tool for tumor-based patient positioning in SBRT.