Ye Siqi, Chen Yizheng, Wang Siqi, Xing Lei, Gao Yu
Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
Med Phys. 2025 May 19. doi: 10.1002/mp.17885.
BACKGROUND: Cone-beam CT (CBCT) is crucial for patient alignment and target verification in radiation therapy (RT). However, for non-coplanar beams, potential collisions between the treatment couch and the on-board imaging system limit the range that the gantry can be rotated. Limited-angle measurements are often insufficient to generate high-quality volumetric images for image-domain registration, therefore limiting the use of CBCT for position verification. An alternative to image-domain registration is to use a few 2D projections acquired by the onboard kV imager to register with the 3D planning CT for patient position verification, which is referred to as 2D-3D registration. PURPOSE: The 2D-3D registration involves converting the 3D volume into a set of digitally reconstructed radiographs (DRRs) expected to be comparable to the acquired 2D projections. The domain gap between the generated DRRs and the acquired projections can happen due to the inaccurate geometry modeling in DRR generation and artifacts in the actual acquisitions. We aim to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the challenging 2D-3D registration problem in non-coplanar RT with limited-angle CBCT scans. METHOD: We designed an accelerated, dataset-free, and patient-specific 2D-3D registration framework based on an implicit neural representation (INR) network and a composite similarity measure. The INR network consists of a lightweight three-layer multilayer perception followed by average pooling to calculate rigid motion parameters, which are used to transform the original 3D volume to the moving position. The Radon transform and imaging specifications at the moving position are used to generate DRRs with higher accuracy. We designed a composite similarity measure consisting of pixel-wise intensity difference and gradient differences between the generated DRRs and acquired projections to further reduce the impact of their domain gap on registration accuracy. We evaluated the proposed method on both simulation data and real phantom data acquired from a Varian TrueBeam machine. Comparisons with a conventional non-deep-learning registration approach and ablation studies on the composite similarity measure were conducted to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method. RESULTS: In the simulation data experiments, two X-ray projections of a head-and-neck image with discrepancy were used for the registration. The accuracy of the registration results was evaluated on experiments set up at four different moving positions with ground-truth moving parameters. The proposed method achieved sub-millimeter accuracy in translations and sub-degree accuracy in rotations. In the phantom experiments, a head-and-neck phantom was scanned at three different positions involving couch translations and rotations. We achieved translation errors of and subdegree accuracy for pitch and roll. Experiments on registration using different numbers of projections with varying angle discrepancies demonstrate the improved accuracy and robustness of the proposed method, compared to both the conventional registration approach and the proposed approach without certain components of the composite similarity measure. CONCLUSION: We proposed a dataset-free lightweight INR-based registration with a composite similarity measure for the challenging 2D-3D registration problem with limited-angle CBCT scans. Comprehensive evaluations of both simulation data and experimental phantom data demonstrated the efficiency, accuracy, and robustness of the proposed method.
背景:锥形束CT(CBCT)对于放射治疗(RT)中患者的定位和靶区验证至关重要。然而,对于非共面射束,治疗床与机载成像系统之间可能发生碰撞,限制了机架的旋转范围。有限角度测量通常不足以生成用于图像域配准的高质量容积图像,因此限制了CBCT在位置验证中的应用。图像域配准的一种替代方法是使用机载kV成像仪获取的一些二维投影与三维计划CT进行配准,以进行患者位置验证,这被称为二维-三维配准。 目的:二维-三维配准涉及将三维容积转换为一组数字重建射线照相(DRR),预期与获取的二维投影具有可比性。由于DRR生成中的几何建模不准确以及实际采集中的伪影,生成的DRR与获取的投影之间可能存在域差距。我们旨在提高在有限角度CBCT扫描的非共面RT中具有挑战性的二维-三维配准问题的效率和准确性。 方法:我们基于隐式神经表示(INR)网络和复合相似性度量设计了一个加速的、无需数据集且针对患者的二维-三维配准框架。INR网络由一个轻量级的三层多层感知器组成,随后进行平均池化以计算刚性运动参数,这些参数用于将原始三维容积变换到移动位置。在移动位置的拉东变换和成像规格用于生成更高精度的DRR。我们设计了一种复合相似性度量,由生成的DRR与获取的投影之间的逐像素强度差异和梯度差异组成,以进一步减少它们的域差距对配准准确性的影响。我们在从瓦里安TrueBeam机器获取的模拟数据和真实体模数据上评估了所提出的方法。与传统的非深度学习配准方法进行了比较,并对复合相似性度量进行了消融研究,以证明所提出方法的有效性。 结果:在模拟数据实验中,使用了具有差异的头部和颈部图像的两个X射线投影进行配准。在具有真实移动参数的四个不同移动位置设置的实验中评估了配准结果的准确性。所提出的方法在平移中实现了亚毫米级的准确性,在旋转中实现了亚度级的准确性。在体模实验中,在涉及治疗床平移和旋转的三个不同位置对头颈部体模进行了扫描。我们实现了平移误差以及俯仰和横滚的亚度级准确性。使用不同数量具有不同角度差异的投影进行配准实验表明,与传统配准方法以及没有复合相似性度量某些组件的所提出方法相比,所提出方法的准确性和鲁棒性得到了提高。 结论:我们针对有限角度CBCT扫描中具有挑战性的二维-三维配准问题,提出了一种无需数据集的轻量级基于INR的配准方法,并采用了复合相似性度量。对模拟数据和实验体模数据的综合评估证明了所提出方法的效率、准确性和鲁棒性。
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