Reduction of transitivity errors in radiotherapy image registration
AssigneeWisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
InventorsWolfgang Axel Tomé, Edward Thomas Bender, Nicholas Gordon Lance Hardcastle
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Deformation maps (e.g. deformation vector fields) used for correcting image-type data used in the treatment of patients in radiotherapy may be processed to eliminate inverse inconsistency and transitivity type errors which produce different results depending on the order or path of the calculation of deformation. The correction permits registration of a treatment plan with the changing patient image and accumulation of dose to a common reference frame without transformation dependent artifacts.
Claims21
A computer program fixed in a non-transitory computer readable medium executable on a computer to implement the steps of:
- (a) receiving a set of images of a treatment region of a patient for at least three different image times;
- (b) determining inverse consistent deformation maps each describing a deformation in the treatment region between pairs of images;
- (c) creating a transitive deformation map between at least one pair of the images, the pair comprising a first and second image, the transitive deformation maps combining the inverse consistent deformation maps between the first and second image and the inverse consistent deformation maps between the first and second images via third images of the set other than the first and second images;
- and
- (d) applying the transitive deformation map to image-type data registered to the first image to register the image-type data with the second image.
A computer executing a stored program to:
- (a) receive a set of images of a treatment region of a patient for at least three different image times;
- (b) determine inverse consistent deformation maps each describing a deformation in the treatment region between pairs of images;
- (c) create a transitive deformation map between at least one pair of the images, the pair comprising a first and second image, the transitive deformation maps combining the inverse consistent deformation maps between the first and second image and the inverse consistent deformation maps between the first and second images via third images of the set other than the first and second images;
- and
- (d) apply the transitive deformation map to image-type data registered to the first image to register the image-type data to the second image.
A method of transforming image-type data registered to a first image to a second image using a computer to implement the steps of:
- (a) receiving a set of images of a treatment region of a patient for at least three different image times;
- (b) determining inverse consistent deformation maps, each describing a deformation in the treatment region between pairs of images;
- (c) create a transitive deformation map between at least one pair of the images, the pair comprising a first and second image, the transitive deformation maps combining the inverse consistent deformation maps between the first and second image and the inverse consistent deformation maps between the first and second images via third images of the set other than the first and second images;
- and
- (d) apply the transitive deformation map to image-type data registered to the first image to register the image-type data to the second image.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.