Cited by 881Advanced Radiotherapy TechniquesMedical Image Segmentation TechniquesRadiation Dose and Imaging

Use of image registration and fusion algorithms and techniques in radiotherapy: Report of the AAPM Radiation Therapy Committee Task Group No. 132

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Brock, Kristy K., Mutic, Sasa, McNutt, Todd R., Li, Hua, Kessler, Marc L.·2017·Medical Physics

Abstract

Image registration and fusion algorithms exist in almost every software system that creates or uses images in radiotherapy. Most treatment planning systems support some form of image registration and fusion to allow the use of multimodality and time-series image data and even anatomical atlases to assist in target volume and normal tissue delineation. Treatment delivery systems perform registration and fusion between the planning images and the in-room images acquired during the treatment to assist patient positioning. Advanced applications are beginning to support daily dose assessment and enable adaptive radiotherapy using image registration and fusion to propagate contours and accumulate dose between image data taken over the course of therapy to provide up-to-date estimates of anatomical changes and delivered dose. This information aids in the detection of anatomical and functional changes that might elicit changes in the treatment plan or prescription. As the output of the image registration process is always used as the input of another process for planning or delivery, it is important to understand and communicate the uncertainty associated with the software in general and the result of a specific registration. Unfortunately, there is no standard mathematical formalism to perform this for real-world situations where noise, distortion, and complex anatomical variations can occur. Validation of the software systems performance is also complicated by the lack of documentation available from commercial systems leading to use of these systems in undesirable 'black-box' fashion. In view of this situation and the central role that image registration and fusion play in treatment planning and delivery, the Therapy Physics Committee of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine commissioned Task Group 132 to review current approaches and solutions for image registration (both rigid and deformable) in radiotherapy and to provide recommendations for quality assurance and quality control of these clinical processes.

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  • A registration is successful if mTRE ≤ 1 mm, following AAPM guidelines.

    “Following guidelines from the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) [11], a registration is successful if mTRE ≤ 1 mm.”

    From Intraoperative 2D/3D Image Registration via Differentiable X-Ray Rendering (2024) · cites this paper as [11]

    Section 4.C.4 specifies a 1 mm tolerance for stereotactic radiosurgery, but not for registration generally. Table III (section 4.D) lists the target registration error tolerance as the maximum voxel dimension, approximately 2–3 mm. The claim omits the condition under which the 1 mm tolerance applies. (LLM, conf=0.88)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Registration is of great significance in radiotherapy; it is performed to calculate the offset of the current target from the planned position, and the offset is used to adjust patient position or radiation beam.

    “Moreover, registration is also of great significance in radiotherapy (11, 12); it is performed to calculate the offset of the current target from the planned position, and the offset determined from the registration is used to adjust the patient position or the radiation beam.”

    From A review of deep learning-based deformable medical image registration (2022) · cites this paper as [12]

    Section 1.B.3 states that registration determines the patient's offset from the planned position and that the resulting transformation is typically used to adjust patient position. Section 6.D.2 also discusses target-focused registration at treatment delivery. The cited passages do not establish that the offset is used to adjust the radiation beam, so that alternative is unsupported. (LLM, conf=0.85)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

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2 of the 175 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Hill DL, Batchelor PG, Holden M, Hawkes DJ. Medical image regis- tration. Phys Med Biol. 2001;46:R1.
  2. Vasquez Osorio EM, Hoogeman MS, Mendez Romero A, Wielopolski P, Zolnay A, Heijmen BJ. Accurate CTMR vessel-guided nonrigid reg- istration of largely deformed livers. Med Phys. 2012;39:2463-2477.

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Authors
Brock, K. K., Mutic, S., McNutt, T. R., Li, H., & Kessler, M. L.
Affiliations
  • The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (US)
  • Washington University in St. Louis (US)
  • Johns Hopkins University (US)
  • University of Michigan (US)
Corresponding author
Brock, Kristy K.
Venue
Medical Physics
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2017-05-23
Volume
44
Issue
7
Pages
e43-e76
ISSN
0094-2405 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2605239868
Cited by
881
References
175
Citations by year
2026: 113 · 2025: 108 · 2024: 105 · 2023: 101 · 2022: 101 · 2021: 92 · 2020: 114 · 2019: 72 · 2018: 56 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 1
FWCI
66.54
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Medical Physics (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Radiation › Advanced Radiotherapy Techniques
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Medical Image Segmentation Techniques
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Radiation Dose and Imaging
Keywords
image registration, image fusion, radiotherapy, rigid registration, deformable image registration, adaptive radiotherapy, quality assurance, quality control, registration uncertainty, multimodal imaging, patient positioning, dose accumulation, target volume delineation, software validation
MeSH terms
Algorithms, Humans, Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted, Software, Tomography, X-Ray Computed

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