Interactive deformable registration visualization and analysis of 4D computed tomography

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d10017203

Radiation therapy is a method for treating patients with various types of cancerous tumors. A major challenge in radiation treatment planning is to treat tumors while avoiding irradiating healthy tissue and organs. The problem is that some tumors in the body are in areas where motion occurs (e.g., due to respiration or other normal functions). Radiation treatment plans must try estimate the position of the moving organ inside the body, since they cannot see inside the body. Even given 2-D and 3-D X-Ray images of the patient, it can be very difficult to understand the complex motion of a tumor. This thesis presents one interactive method for analyzing 4-D X-Ray Computed Tomography (4DCT) images for patient care and research. 4-D includes 3-D volume rendering and time (the fourth dimension). Our 4DCT visualization tools have been developed using the SCIRun Problem Solving Environment. Deformable registration is one way to observe the motion of anatomy in images from one respiratory phase to another. Our system provides users with the capability to visualize these trajectories while simultaneously viewing rendered anatomical volumes, which can greatly improve the accuracy of deformable registration as a means of analysis.