Evaluation of the combined use of two different respiratory monitoring systems for 4D CT simulation and gated treatment.

PURPOSE: Two different respiratory monitoring systems (Varian's Real-Time Position Management (RPM) System and Siemens' ANZAI belt Respiratory Gating System) are compared in the context of respiratory signals and 4D CT images that are accordingly reconstructed. This study aims to evaluate the feasibility of combined use of RPM and ANZAI systems for 4DCT simulation and gated radiotherapy treatment, respectively.

METHODS: The RPM infrared reflecting marker and the ANZAI belt pressure sensor were both placed on the patient's abdomen during 4DCT scans. The respiratory signal collected by the two systems was synchronized. Fifteen patients were enrolled for respiratory signal collection and analysis. The discrepancies between the RPM and ANZAI traces can be characterized by phase shift and shape distortion. To reveal the impact of the changes in respiratory signals on 4D images, two sets of 4D images based on the same patient's raw data were reconstructed using the RPM and ANZAI data for phase sorting, respectively. The volume of whole lung and the position of diaphragm apex were measured and compared for each respiratory phase.

RESULTS: The mean phase shift was measured as 0.2 ± 0.1 s averaged over 15 patients. The shape of the breathing trace was found to be in disagreement. For all the patients, the ANZAI trace had a steeper falloff in exhalation than RPM. The inhalation curve, however, was matched for nine patients, steeper in ANZAI for five patients and steeper in RPM for one patient. For 4D image comparison, the difference in whole-lung volume was about -4% to +4% and the difference in diaphragm position was about -5 mm to +4 mm, compared in each individual phase and averaged over seven patients.

CONCLUSIONS: Combined use of one system for 4D CT simulation and the other for gated treatment should be avoided as the resultant gating window would not fully match with each other due to the remarkable discrepancy in breathing traces acquired by the two different surrogate systems.