Real Time Tracking of Lung Tumours Using Low Field MRI: A Feasibility Study

• Author / Creator

  Yip, Eugene

• The aim of this work is to evaluate the feasibility of low field MR based real time lung tumour tracking, a promising application of proposed linac-MR system. In this work, motion phantoms replicating low field MR contrast parameters for thoracic anatomy of lung cancer patients are imaged with fast imaging sequences in 3 T MRI. Noise is added to generate "low field equivalent" images. Using these phantom images, the accuracy of auto-segmentation was demonstrated by comparing the determined tumour shapes against reference shapes, and by comparing the determined tumour location against the independently measured reference tumour motion trajectory. Low field equivalent images are also generated for a lung cancer patient, and the tumour’s shape and location determined via auto-segmentation. Low field MRI shows promise in terms of determining the shape and location of tumour in real-time such that it is feasible to track the moving tumours in real-time.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Image Guidance
  • MR Tumour Tracking

• Graduation date

  Spring 2012

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R35P6K

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.