In-vivo lung biomechanical modeling for effective tumor motion tracking in external beam radiation therapy

Parya Jafari; Sergio Dempsey; Douglas A Hoover; Elham Karami; Stewart Gaede; Ali Sadeghi-Naini; Ting Yim Lee; Abbas Samani

doi:10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104231

In-vivo lung biomechanical modeling for effective tumor motion tracking in external beam radiation therapy

Comput Biol Med. 2021 Mar:130:104231. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104231. Epub 2021 Jan 20.

Authors

Parya Jafari¹, Sergio Dempsey¹, Douglas A Hoover², Elham Karami³, Stewart Gaede⁴, Ali Sadeghi-Naini⁵, Ting Yim Lee⁶, Abbas Samani⁷

Affiliations

¹ School of Biomedical Engineering, Western University, London, ON, Canada.
² Department of Radiation Oncology, London Regional Cancer Program, London, ON, Canada; Department of Oncology, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University, London, ON, Canada; Department of Medical Biophysics, Western University, London, ON, Canada.
³ Knowtions Research, Toronto, ON, Canada.
⁴ Department of Radiation Oncology, London Regional Cancer Program, London, ON, Canada; Department of Oncology, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University, London, ON, Canada; Department of Medical Biophysics, Western University, London, ON, Canada; Imaging Program, Lawson Health Research Institute, London, ON, Canada.
⁵ Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Radiation Oncology and Physical Sciences Platform, Odette Cancer Centre and Sunnybrook Research Institute, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
⁶ Department of Medical Biophysics, Western University, London, ON, Canada; Imaging Program, Lawson Health Research Institute, London, ON, Canada; Imaging Research Laboratories, Robarts Research Institute, London, ON, Canada.
⁷ School of Biomedical Engineering, Western University, London, ON, Canada; Department of Medical Biophysics, Western University, London, ON, Canada; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Western University, London, ON, Canada; Imaging Research Laboratories, Robarts Research Institute, London, ON, Canada. Electronic address: asamani@uwo.ca.

PMID: 33524903
DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104231

Abstract

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death in both men and women. Radiation therapy is widely used for lung cancer treatment; however, respiratory motion presents challenges that can compromise the accuracy and/or effectiveness of radiation treatment. Respiratory motion compensation using biomechanical modeling is a common approach used to address this challenge. This study focuses on the development and validation of a lung biomechanical model that can accurately estimate the motion and deformation of lung tumor. Towards this goal, treatment planning 4D-CT images of lung cancer patients were processed to develop patient-specific finite element (FE) models of the lung to predict the patients' tumor motion/deformation. The tumor motion/deformation was modeled for a full respiration cycle, as captured by the 4D-CT scans. Parameters driving the lung and tumor deformation model were found through an inverse problem formulation. The CT datasets pertaining to the inhalation phases of respiration were used for validating the model's accuracy. The volumetric Dice similarity coefficient between the actual and simulated gross tumor volumes (GTVs) of the patients calculated across respiration phases was found to range between 0.80 ± 0.03 and 0.92 ± 0.01. The average error in estimating tumor's center of mass calculated across respiration phases ranged between 0.50 ± 0.10 (mm) and 1.04 ± 0.57 (mm), indicating a reasonably good accuracy of the proposed model. The proposed model demonstrates favorable accuracy for estimating the lung tumor motion/deformation, and therefore can potentially be used in radiation therapy applications for respiratory motion compensation.

Keywords: Image registration; Lung biomechanical model; Radiation therapy; Respiratory motion; Tumor tracking.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Female
Four-Dimensional Computed Tomography*
Humans
Lung / diagnostic imaging
Lung Neoplasms* / diagnostic imaging
Lung Neoplasms* / radiotherapy
Male
Motion
Movement
Respiration

Grants and funding

CIHR/Canada