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Title: Enhanced Optical Head Tracking for Cranial Radiation Therapy: Supporting Surface Registration by Cutaneous Structures

Journal Article · · International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology and Physics
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  1. Institute for Robotics and Cognitive Systems, University of Lübeck, Lübeck (Germany)
  2. Institute for Neuroradiology, Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Hostein, Campus Lübeck, Lübeck (Germany)
  3. Clinic for Oral and Maxillo-Facial Surgery, Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Hostein, Campus Lübeck, Lübeck (Germany)
  4. Department of Neurology, Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Hostein, Campus Lübeck, Lübeck (Germany)

Purpose: To support surface registration in cranial radiation therapy by structural information. The risk for spatial ambiguities is minimized by using tissue thickness variations predicted from backscattered near-infrared (NIR) light from the forehead. Methods and Materials: In a pilot study we recorded NIR surface scans by laser triangulation from 30 volunteers of different skin type. A ground truth for the soft-tissue thickness was segmented from MR scans. After initially matching the NIR scans to the MR reference, Gaussian processes were trained to predict tissue thicknesses from NIR backscatter. Moreover, motion starting from this initial registration was simulated by 5000 random transformations of the NIR scan away from the MR reference. Re-registration to the MR scan was compared with and without tissue thickness support. Results: By adding prior knowledge to the backscatter features, such as incident angle and neighborhood information in the scanning grid, we showed that tissue thickness can be predicted with mean errors of <0.2 mm, irrespective of the skin type. With this additional information, the average registration error improved from 3.4 mm to 0.48 mm by a factor of 7. Misalignments of more than 1 mm were almost thoroughly (98.9%) pushed below 1 mm. Conclusions: For almost all cases tissue-enhanced matching achieved better results than purely spatial registration. Ambiguities can be minimized if the cutaneous structures do not agree. This valuable support for surface registration increases tracking robustness and avoids misalignment of tumor targets far from the registration site.

OSTI ID:
22648700
Journal Information:
International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology and Physics, Vol. 95, Issue 2; Other Information: Copyright (c) 2016 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0360-3016
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English