Real-time intra-fraction target tracking is a technique that enables adjustment of the target radiation while it is being delivered (i.e., intra-fraction adjustments) to compensate for movement of the organ inside the body. Real-time tracking, which may or may not use radiographic images, is one of many techniques referred to as “image-guided radiotherapy” (IGRT). For this policy, realtime trac...

The aim of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of daily prostate localization with ultrasound imaging of various radiation oncologists with nonhomogeneous expertise. For ten patients who underwent radical radiotherapy for localized prostate cancer, 11 radiation oncologists reviewed daily ultrasound scans acquired during three different treatment sessions. The average values of two senior rad...

BACKGROUND Theoretically, a cross-sectional image of any cardiac planes can be obtained from a STIC fetal heart volume dataset. We described a method to display 11 fetal echocardiographic planes from STIC volumes. METHODS Fetal heart volume datasets were acquired by transverse acquisition from 200 normal fetuses at 15 to 40 weeks of gestation. Analysis of the volume datasets using the describ...

PURPOSE To validate absolute dose measurements for a MR-IGRT system without presence of the magnetic field. METHODS The standard method (AAPM's TG-51) of absolute dose measurement with ionization chambers was tested with and without the presence of the magnetic field for a clinical 0.32-T Co-60 MR-IGRT system. Two ionization chambers were used - the Standard Imaging (Madison, WI) A18 (0.123 c...

Aneurysms of the azygos vein are rare and can sometimes mimic a paratracheal or posterior mediastinal mass. It is important to confirm the diagnosis with radiologic tools before performing invasive procedures, which carry the risk of hemorrhage. Here, we present a case in a 79-year-old asymptomatic patient of an increasing azygos vein aneurysm that mimicked a growing paratracheal mass. Review o...

Skull stripping is a process of segmenting brain portion in MR brain images. It is an important image processing step in many neuroimage studies. In this paper, we propose a new skull stripping method for magnetic resonance image (MRI) of human head scans based on 2D region growing. This is a fully automatic method for segmenting the brain portion from T1, T2 and PD weighted MR images. The prop...

We present a method for the automatic detection of the uterus and the Fallopian tube/Uterus junctions (FU-junctions) in a monocular laparoscopic image. The main application is to perform automatic registration and fusion between preoperative radiological images of the uterus and laparoscopic images for image-guided surgery. In the broader context of computer assisted intervention, our method is...

The image-guided radiotherapy technique (IGRT) makes use of imaging devices to verify the positions of the target volume and organs at risk during the treatment sessions. In this work we evaluate the image quality provided by an imaging system based on a kilovoltage cone-beam CT, and explore its ability to perform IGRT and adaptive radiotherapy. We analyze the accuracy of the image slice width,...

This paper presents an efficient image compression approach based on JPEG image compression. JPEG is the most frequently applied image compression technique in today‟s world. We have developed an application based on VB.NET for converting and compressing images in JPEG format. Using this application we finally propose a relation between image quality with the amount of image compression.

PURPOSE The aim of this study is to evaluate the tracking accuracy of a commercial ultrasound system under relevant treatment conditions and demonstrate its clinical utility for detecting significant treatment deviations arising from inadvertent intrafractional target motion. METHODS A multimodality male pelvic phantom was used to simulate prostate image-guided radiotherapy with the system un...