Breath-hold target localization with simultaneous kilovoltage/megavoltage cone-beam computed tomography and fast reconstruction.

PURPOSE: Hypofractionated high-dose radiotherapy for small lung tumors has typically been based on stereotaxy. Cone-beam computed tomography and breath-hold techniques have provided a noninvasive basis for precise cranial and extracranial patient positioning. The cone-beam computed tomography acquisition time of 60 s, however, is beyond the breath-hold capacity of patients, resulting in respiratory motion artifacts. By combining megavoltage (MV) and kilovoltage (kV) photon sources (mounted perpendicularly on the linear accelerator) and accelerating the gantry rotation to the allowed limit, the data acquisition time could be reduced to 15 s.

METHODS AND MATERIALS: An Elekta Synergy 6-MV linear accelerator, with iViewGT as the MV- and XVI as the kV-imaging device, was used with a Catphan phantom and an anthropomorphic thorax phantom. Both image sources performed continuous image acquisition, passing an angle interval of 90° within 15 s. For reconstruction, filtered back projection on a graphics processor unit was used. It reconstructed 100 projections acquired to a 512 × 512 × 512 volume within 6 s.

RESULTS: The resolution in the Catphan phantom (CTP528 high-resolution module) was 3 lines/cm. The spatial accuracy was within 2-3 mm. The diameters of different tumor shapes in the thorax phantom were determined within an accuracy of 1.6 mm. The signal-to-noise ratio was 68% less than that with a 180°-kV scan. The dose generated to acquire the MV frames accumulated to 82.5 mGy, and the kV contribution was <6 mGy.

CONCLUSION: The present results have shown that fast breath-hold, on-line volume imaging with a linear accelerator using simultaneous kV-MV cone-beam computed tomography is promising and can potentially be used for image-guided radiotherapy for lung cancer patients in the near future.