Factors affecting the accuracy of respiratory tracking of the image-guided robotic radiosurgery system.

PURPOSE: To analyze the factors affecting the tracking accuracy of the CyberKnife Synchrony Respiratory Tracking System (SRTS). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A dynamic motion phantom (motion phantom) reproduced the respiratory motions of each patient treated with the SRTS using a ball as the target. CyberKnife tracked the ball using the SRTS, and this process was recorded by a video camera mounted on the linear accelerator head. The tracking error was evaluated from the images captured by the video camera. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify factors affecting tracking accuracy from 91 cases. RESULTS: The median tracking error was 1.9 mm (range 0.9-5.3 mm). Four factors affected the tracking accuracy: the average absolute amplitude of the tumor motion in the cranio-caudal (CC) direction (p = 0.007), average position gap due to the phase shift between the internal tumor and external marker positions in the CC direction (p < 0.001), and average velocity of the tumor in the CC (p < 0.001) and anterior-posterior directions (p = 0.033). CONCLUSION: We identified factors that affected tracking accuracy. This information may assist the identification of suitable margins that should be added to each patient's clinical target volume.

[Evaluation of the Effect of Adiabatic Pulse and B1 Shim to the Radio Frequency Homogeneity in Chemical Shift Imaging].

It is considered that the enhancement of chemical shift and the elevation of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) induced by high magnetic fields are useful for the evaluation of metabolism using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). However, the reduction of the localization in MRS seems to be caused by the decreased homogeneity of radio frequency (RF) pulses, especially in chemical shift imaging (CSI). To search the influence of B1 shim mode and the significance of adiabatic pulses, we have examined the changes of RF homogeneity using 3 T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with the water phantom and the metabolites phantom (containing acetate and lactate) in CSI. The RF homogeneity and chemical shift artifact were obviously improved using the adiabatic pulses. Improvement of the homogeneity of RF pulses was observed when B1 shim was used. These results suggest the usefulness of CSI using adiabatic pulses and B1 shim when small amount of metabolites of target is measured in MRS.