GPU Accelerated Viscous-fluid Deformable Registration for Radiotherapy

Abstract

In cancer treatment organ and tissue deformation between radiotherapy sessions represent a significant challenge to optimal planning and delivery of radiation doses. Recent developments in image guided radiotherapy has caused a sound request for more advanced approaches for image registration to handle these deformations. Viscous-fluid registration is one such deformable registration method. A drawback with this method has been that it has required computation times that were too long to make the approach clinically applicable. With recent advances in programmability of graphics hardware, complex user defined calculations can now be performed on consumer graphics cards (GPUs). This paper demonstrates that the GPU can be used to drastically reduce the time needed to register two medical 3D images using the viscous-fluid registration method. This facilitates an increased incorporation of image registration in radiotherapy treatment of cancer patients, potentially leading to more efficient treatment with less severe side effects.

Locating and targeting moving tumors with radiation beams

“…Graphical processing units ͑GPUs͒ can offer near realtime speed for deformable algorithms. [84][85][86][87][88] Fast 4D optimization algorithms will also directly benefit from ongoing advancements in processor technology.…”