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Quantification of the thorax-to-abdomen breathing ratio for breathing motion modeling.

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to develop a methodology to quantitatively measure the thorax-to-abdomen breathing ratio from a 4DCT dataset for breathing motion modeling and breathing motion studies.The thorax-to-abdomen breathing ratio was quantified by measuring the rate of cross-sectional volume increase throughout the thorax and abdomen as a function of tidal volume. Twenty-six 16-slice 4DCT patient datasets were acquired during quiet respiration using a protocol that acquired 25 ciné scans at each couch position. Fifteen datasets included data from the neck through the pelvis. Tidal volume, measured using a spirometer and abdominal pneumatic bellows, was used as breathing-cycle surrogates. The cross-sectional volume encompassed by the skin contour when compared for each CT slice against the tidal volume exhibited a nearly linear relationship. A robust iteratively reweighted least squares regression analysis was used to determine η(i), defined as the amount of cross-sectional volume expansion at each slice i per unit tidal volume. The sum Ση(i) throughout all slices was predicted to be the ratio of the geometric expansion of the lung and the tidal volume; 1.11. The Xiphoid process was selected as the boundary between the thorax and abdomen. The Xiphoid process slice was identified in a scan acquired at mid-inhalation. The imaging protocol had not originally been designed for purposes of measuring the thorax-to-abdomen breathing ratio so the scans did not extend to the anatomy with η(i) = 0. Extrapolation of η(i)-η(i) = 0 was used to include the entire breathing volume. The thorax and abdomen regions were individually analyzed to determine the thorax-to-abdomen breathing ratios. There were 11 image datasets that had been scanned only through the thorax. For these cases, the abdomen breathing component was equal to 1.11 - Ση(i) where the sum was taken throughout the thorax.The average Ση(i) for thorax and abdomen image datasets was found to be 1.20 ± 0.17, close to the expected value of 1.11. The thorax-to-abdomen breathing ratio was 0.32 ± 0.24. The average Ση(i) was 0.26 ± 0.14 in the thorax and 0.93 ± 0.22 in the abdomen. In the scan datasets that encompassed only the thorax, the average Ση(i) was 0.21 ± 0.11.A method to quantify the relationship between abdomen and thoracic breathing was developed and characterized.

SUBMITTER: White BM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3669136 | biostudies-other | 2013 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Project description:The accuracy of deformable image registration tools can vary widely between imaging modalities and specific implementations of the same algorithms. A biomechanical model-based algorithm initially developed in-house at an academic institution was translated into a commercial radiotherapy treatment planning system and validated for multiple imaging modalities and anatomic sites.Biomechanical deformable registration (Morfeus) is a geometry-driven algorithm based on the finite element method. Boundary conditions are derived from the model-based segmentation of controlling structures in each image which establishes a point-to-point surface correspondence. For each controlling structure, material properties and fixed or sliding interfaces are assigned. The displacements of internal volumes for controlling structures and other structures implicitly deformed are solved with finite element analysis. Registration was performed for 74 patients with images (mean vector resolution) of thoracic and abdominal 4DCT (2.8 mm) and MR (5.3 mm), liver CT-MR (4.5 mm), and prostate MR (2.6 mm). Accuracy was quantified between deformed and actual target images using distance-to-agreement (DTA) for structure surfaces and the target registration error (TRE) for internal point landmarks.The results of the commercial implementation were as follows. The mean DTA was ? 1.0 mm for controlling structures and 1.0-3.5 mm for implicitly deformed structures on average. TRE ranged from 2.0 mm on prostate MR to 5.1 mm on lung MR on average, within 0.1 mm or lower than the image voxel sizes. Accuracy was not overly sensitive to changes in the material properties or variability in structure segmentations, as changing these inputs affected DTA and TRE by ? 0.8 mm. Maximum DTA > 5 mm occurred for 88% of the structures evaluated although these were within the inherent segmentation uncertainty for 82% of structures. Differences in accuracy between the commercial and in-house research implementations were ? 0.5 mm for mean DTA and ? 0.7 mm for mean TRE.Accuracy of biomechanical deformable registration evaluated on a large cohort of images in the thorax, abdomen and prostate was similar to the image voxel resolution on average across multiple modalities. Validation of this treatment planning system implementation supports biomechanical deformable registration as a versatile clinical tool to enable accurate target delineation at planning and treatment adaptation.

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Quantification of the thorax-to-abdomen breathing ratio for breathing motion modeling.

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