Image enhancement techniques allowing observation of intra-fractional motion in IMRT treatment for prostate carcinoma

摘要

Purpose: To estimate intrafracional motion of the prostate in a routine clinical setting during IMRT treatment and its impact on margin reduction and treatment time. Method and Materials: We outline the theory and algorithms needed to provide positional information from images obtained during IMRT treatment with dynamic sliding window tech-niques. The patients underwent a marker match procedure en-suring correct positioning at time of treatment For all fields intra-treatment images were obtained, yielding 5 to 7 images per fraction. The images were processed using the proposed al-gorithm. The markers were detected in the image using an au-tomated methodology.