Efficient use of continuous, real-time prostate localization

Real-time nonstandard-shaped gold fiducial marker tracking on x-ray fluoroscopic images for prostate radiotherapy

Objective.The prostate moves in accordance with the movement of surrounding organs. Tumor position can change by ≥3 mm during radiotherapy. Given the difficulties of visualizing the prostate fluoroscopically, fiducial markers are generally implanted into the prostate to monitor its motion during treatment. Recently, internally motion guidance methods of the prostate using a 99.5% gold/0.5% iron flexible notched wire fiducial marker (Gold Anchor® , Naslund Medical AB, Huddinge, Sweden), which requires a 22 gauge needle, has been used. However, because the notched wire can retain its linear shape, acquire a spiral shape, or roll into an irregular ball, detecting it on fluoroscopic images in real-time incurs higher computation costs.Approach.We developed a fiducial tracking algorithm to achieve real-time computation. The marker is detected on the first image frame using a shape filter that employs inter-class variance for the marker likelihood calculated by the filter, focusing on the large difference in densities between the marker and its surroundings. After the second frame, the marker is tracked by adding to the shape filter the similarity to the template cropped from the area around the marker position detected in the first frame. We retrospectively evaluated the algorithm's marker tracking accuracy for ten prostate cases, analyzing two fractions in each case.Main results.Tracking positional accuracy averaged over all patients was 0.13 ± 0.04 mm (mean ± standard deviation, Euclidean distance) and 0.25 ± 0.09 mm (95th percentile). Computation time was 2.82 ± 0.20 ms/frame averaged over all frames.Significance.Our algorithm successfully and stably tracked irregularly-shaped markers in real time.

Automatic prostate tracking and motion assessment in volumetric modulated arc therapy with an electronic portal imaging device

PURPOSE

To assess the prostate intrafraction motion in volumetric modulated arc therapy treatments using cine megavoltage (MV) images acquired with an electronic portal imaging device (EPID).

METHODS AND MATERIALS

Ten prostate cancer patients were treated with volumetric modulated arc therapy using a Varian TrueBeam linear accelerator equipped with an EPID for acquiring cine MV images during treatment. Cine MV images acquisition was scheduled for single or multiple treatment fractions (between 1 and 8). A novel automatic fiducial detection algorithm that can handle irregular multileaf collimator apertures, field edges, fast leaf and gantry movement, and MV image noise and artifacts in patient anatomy was used. All sets of images (approximately 25,000 images in total) were analyzed to measure the positioning accuracy of implanted fiducial markers and assess the prostate movement.

RESULTS

Prostate motion can vary greatly in magnitude among different patients. Different motion patterns were identified, showing its unpredictability. The mean displacement and standard deviation of the intrafraction motion was generally less than 2.0 ± 2.0 mm in each of the spatial directions. In certain patients, however, the percentage of the treatment time in which the prostate is displaced more than 5 mm from its planned position in at least 1 spatial direction was 10% or more. The maximum prostate displacement observed was 13.3 mm.

CONCLUSION

Prostate tracking and motion assessment was performed with MV imaging and an EPID. The amount of prostate motion observed suggests that patients will benefit from its real-time monitoring. Megavoltage imaging can provide the basis for real-time prostate tracking using conventional linear accelerators.

Incorporation of treatment plan spatial and temporal dose patterns into a prostate intrafractional motion management strategy

PURPOSE

Periodic MV∕KV radiographs taken during volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) for hypofractionated treatment provide guidance in intrafractional motion management. The choice of imaging frequency and timing are key components in delivering the desired dose while reducing associated overhead such as imaging dose, preparation, and processing time. In this project the authors propose a paradigm with imaging timing and frequency based on the spatial and temporal dose patterns of the treatment plan.

METHODS

A number of control points are used in treatment planning to model VMAT delivery. For each control point, the sensitivity of individual target or organ-at-risk dose to motion can be calculated as the summation of dose degradations given the organ displacements along a number of possible motion directions. Instead of acquiring radiographs at uniform time intervals, MV∕KV image pairs are acquired indexed to motion sensitivity. Five prostate patients treated via hypofractionated VMAT are included in this study. Intrafractional prostate motion traces from the database of an electromagnetic tracking system are used to retrospectively simulate the VMAT delivery and motion management. During VMAT delivery simulation patient position is corrected based on the radiographic findings via couch movement if target deviation violates a patient-specific 3D threshold. The violation rate calculated as the percentage of traces failing the clinical dose objectives after motion correction is used to evaluate the efficacy of this approach.

RESULTS

Imaging indexed to a 10 s equitime interval and correcting patient position accordingly reduces the violation rate to 19.5% with intervention from 44.5% without intervention. Imaging indexed to the motion sensitivity further reduces the violation rate to 12.1% with the same number of images. To achieve the same 5% violation rate, the imaging incidence can be reduced by 40% by imaging indexed to motion sensitivity instead of time.

CONCLUSIONS

The simulation results suggest that image scheduling according to the characteristics of the treatment plan can improve the efficiency of intrafractional motion management. Using such a technique, the accuracy of delivered dose during image-guided hypofractionated VMAT treatment can be improved.

Determination of action thresholds for electromagnetic tracking system-guided hypofractionated prostate radiotherapy using volumetric modulated arc therapy

PURPOSE

Hypofractionated prostate radiotherapy may benefit from both volumetric modulated are therapy (VMAT) due to shortened treatment time and intrafraction real-time monitoring provided by implanted radiofrequency(RF) transponders. The authors investigate dosimetrically driven action thresholds (whether treatment needs to be interrupted and patient repositioned) in VMAT treatment with electromagnetic (EM) tracking.

METHODS

VMAT plans for five patients are generated for prescription doses of 32.5 and 42.5 Gy in five fractions. Planning target volume (PTV) encloses the clinical target volume (CTV) with a 3 mm margin at the prostate-rectal interface and 5 mm elsewhere. The VMAT delivery is modeled using 180 equi-spaced static beams. Intrafraction prostate motion is simulated in the plan by displacing the beam isocenter at each beam assuming rigid organ motion according to a previously recorded trajectory of the transponder centroid. The cumulative dose delivered in each fraction is summed over all beams. Two sets of 57 prostate motion trajectories were randomly selected to form a learning and a testing dataset. Dosimetric end points including CTV D95%, rectum wall D1cc, bladder wall D1cc, and urethra Dmax, are analyzed against motion characteristics including the maximum amplitude of the anterior-posterior (AP), superior-inferior (SI), and left-right components. Action thresholds are triggered when intrafraction motion causes any violations of dose constraints to target and organs at risk (OAR), so that treatment is interrupted and patient is repositioned.

RESULTS

Intrafraction motion has a little effect on CTV D95%, indicating PTV margins are adequate. Tight posterior and inferior action thresholds around 1 mm need to be set in a patient specific manner to spare organs at risk, especially when the prescription dose is 42.5 Gy. Advantages of setting patient specific action thresholds are to reduce false positive alarms by 25% when prescription dose is low, and increase the sensitivity of detecting dose limits violations by 30% when prescription dose is high, compared to a generic 2 mm action box. The sensitivity and specificity calculated from the testing dataset are consistent to the learning set, which indicates that the patient specific approach is reliable and reproducible within the scope of the prostate database.

CONCLUSIONS

This work introduces a formalism for ensuring a VMAT delivery meets the most clinically important dose requirements by using patient specific and dosimetric-driven action thresholds to hold the beam and reposition the patient when necessary. Such methods can provide improved sensitivity and specificity compared to conventional methods, which assume directionally symmetric action thresholds.

Sensitivity of postplanning target and OAR coverage estimates to dosimetric margin distribution sampling parameters

PURPOSE

A dosimetric margin (DM) is the margin in a specified direction between a structure and a specified isodose surface, corresponding to a prescription or tolerance dose. The dosimetric margin distribution (DMD) is the distribution of DMs over all directions. Given a geometric uncertainty model, representing inter- or intrafraction setup uncertainties or internal organ motion, the DMD can be used to calculate coverage Q, which is the probability that a realized target or organ-at-risk (OAR) dose metric D, exceeds the corresponding prescription or tolerance dose. Postplanning coverage evaluation quantifies the percentage of uncertainties for which target and OAR structures meet their intended dose constraints. The goal of the present work is to evaluate coverage probabilities for 28 prostate treatment plans to determine DMD sampling parameters that ensure adequate accuracy for postplanning coverage estimates.

METHODS

Normally distributed interfraction setup uncertainties were applied to 28 plans for localized prostate cancer, with prescribed dose of 79.2 Gy and 10 mm clinical target volume to planning target volume (CTV-to-PTV) margins. Using angular or isotropic sampling techniques, dosimetric margins were determined for the CTV, bladder and rectum, assuming shift invariance of the dose distribution. For angular sampling, DMDs were sampled at fixed angular intervals w (e.g., w = 1 degree, 2 degrees, 5 degrees, 10 degrees, 20 degrees). Isotropic samples were uniformly distributed on the unit sphere resulting in variable angular increments, but were calculated for the same number of sampling directions as angular DMDs, and accordingly characterized by the effective angular increment omega eff. In each direction, the DM was calculated by moving the structure in radial steps of size delta (=0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1 mm) until the specified isodose was crossed. Coverage estimation accuracy deltaQ was quantified as a function of the sampling parameters omega or omega eff and delta.

RESULTS

The accuracy of coverage estimates depends on angular and radial DMD sampling parameters omega or omega eff and delta, as well as the employed sampling technique. Target deltaQ/ < l% and OAR /deltaQ/ < 3% can be achieved with sampling parameters omega or omega eef = 20 degrees, delta =1 mm. Better accuracy (target /deltaQ < 0.5% and OAR /deltaQ < approximately 1%) can be achieved with omega or omega eff = 10 degrees, delta = 0.5 mm. As the number of sampling points decreases, the isotropic sampling method maintains better accuracy than fixed angular sampling.

CONCLUSIONS

Coverage estimates for post-planning evaluation are essential since coverage values of targets and OARs often differ from the values implied by the static margin-based plans. Finer sampling of the DMD enables more accurate assessment of the effect of geometric uncertainties on coverage estimates prior to treatment. DMD sampling with omega or omega eff = 10 degrees and delta = 0.5 mm should be adequate for planning purposes.

Clinical development of a failure detection-based online repositioning strategy for prostate IMRT--experiments, simulation, and dosimetry study

PURPOSE

To implement and evaluate clinic-ready adaptive imaging protocols for online patient repositioning (motion tracking) during prostate IMRT using treatment beam imaging supplemented by minimal, as-needed use of on-board kV.

METHODS

The authors examine the two-step decision-making strategy: (1) Use cine-MV imaging and online-updated characterization of prostate motion to detect target motion that is potentially beyond a predefined threshold and (2) use paired MV-kV 3D localization to determine overthreshold displacement and, if needed, reposition the patient. Two levels of clinical implementation were evaluated: (1) Field-by-field based motion correction for present-day linacs and (2) instantaneous repositioning for new-generation linacs with capabilities of simultaneous MV-kV imaging and remote automatic couch control during treatment delivery. Experiments were performed on a Varian Trilogy linac in clinical mode using a 4D motion phantom programed with prostate motion trajectories taken from patient data. Dosimetric impact was examined using a 2D ion chamber array. Simulations were done for 536 trajectories from 17 patients.

RESULTS

Despite the loss of marker detection efficiency caused by the MLC leaves sometimes obscuring the field at the marker's projected position on the MV imager, the field-by-field correction halved (from 23% to 10%) the mean percentage of time that target displacement exceeded a 3 mm threshold, as compared to no intervention. This was achieved at minimal cost in additional imaging (average of one MV-kV pair per two to three treatment fractions) and with a very small number of repositionings (once every four to five fractions). Also with low kV usage (approximation 2/fraction), the instantaneous repositioning approach reduced overthreshold time by more than 75% (23% to 5%) even with severe MLC blockage as often encountered in current IMRT and could reduce the overthreshold time tenfold (to < 2%) if the MLC blockage problem were relieved. The information acquired for repositioning using combined MV-kV images was found to have submillimeter accuracy.

CONCLUSIONS

This work demonstrated with a current clinical setup that substantial reduction of adverse targeting effects of intrafraction prostate motion can be realized. The proposed adaptive imaging strategy incurs minimal imaging dose to the patient as compared to other stereoscopic imaging techniques.

Analysis of prostate patient setup and tracking data: potential intervention strategies

PURPOSE

To evaluate the setup, interfraction, and intrafraction organ motion error distributions and simulate intrafraction intervention strategies for prostate radiotherapy.

METHODS AND MATERIALS

A total of 17 patients underwent treatment setup and were monitored using the Calypso system during radiotherapy. On average, the prostate tracking measurements were performed for 8 min/fraction for 28 fractions for each patient. For both patient couch shift data and intrafraction organ motion data, the systematic and random errors were obtained from the patient population. The planning target volume margins were calculated using the van Herk formula. Two intervention strategies were simulated using the tracking data: the deviation threshold and period. The related planning target volume margins, time costs, and prostate position "fluctuation" were presented.

RESULTS

The required treatment margin for the left-right, superoinferior, and anteroposterior axes was 8.4, 10.8, and 14.7 mm for skin mark-only setup and 1.3, 2.3, and 2.8 mm using the on-line setup correction, respectively. Prostate motion significantly correlated among the superoinferior and anteroposterior directions. Of the 17 patients, 14 had prostate motion within 5 mm of the initial setup position for ≥91.6% of the total tracking time. The treatment margin decreased to 1.1, 1.8, and 2.3 mm with a 3-mm threshold correction and to 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 mm with an every-2-min correction in the left-right, superoinferior, and anteroposterior directions, respectively. The periodic corrections significantly increase the treatment time and increased the number of instances when the setup correction was made during transient excursions.

CONCLUSIONS

The residual systematic and random error due to intrafraction prostate motion is small after on-line setup correction. Threshold-based and time-based intervention strategies both reduced the planning target volume margins. The time-based strategies increased the treatment time and the in-fraction position fluctuation.

Optimized hybrid megavoltage-kilovoltage imaging protocol for volumetric prostate arc therapy

PURPOSE

To develop a real-time prostate position monitoring technique for modern arc radiotherapy through novel use of cine-megavoltage (MV) imaging, together with as-needed kilovoltage (kV) imaging.

METHODS AND MATERIALS

We divided the task of monitoring the intrafraction prostate motion into two steps for rotational deliveries: to detect potential target motion beyond a predefined threshold using MV images from different viewing angles by taking advantage of gantry rotation during arc therapy and to verify the displacement and determine whether intervention is needed using fiducial/tumor position information acquired from combined MV-kV imaging (by turning on the kV imager). A Varian Trilogy linear accelerator with an onboard kV imager was used to examine selected typical trajectories using a four-dimensional motion phantom. The performance of the algorithm was evaluated using phantom measurements and computer simulation for 536 Calypso-measured tracks from 17 patients.

RESULTS

Fiducial displacement relative to the MV beam was limited to within a range of 3 mm 99.9% of the time with <1 mm accuracy. On average, only ∼0.5 intervention per arc delivery was needed to achieve this level of accuracy. Compared with other fluoroscopy-based tracking techniques, kV use was significantly reduced to an average of <15 times per arc delivery.

CONCLUSION

By focusing the attention on detecting predefined abnormal motion (i.e., "failure" detection) and using the inherent mechanism of gantry rotation during arc radiotherapy, the current approach provides high confidence regarding the prostate position in real time without the unwanted overhead of continuous or periodic kV imaging.