Serious game for radiotherapy training.

Background: Cancer patients are often treated with radiation, therefore increasing their exposure to high energy emissions. In such cases, medical errors may be threatening or fatal, inducing the need to innovate new methods for maximum reduction of irreversible events. Training is an efficient and methodical tool to subject professionals to the real world and heavily educate them on how to perform with minimal errors.

National Diagnostic Reference Levels for Nuclear Medicine in Qatar.

Nuclear medicine (NM) started in Qatar in the mid-1980s with a 1-head γ-camera in Hamad General Hospital. However, Qatar is expanding, and now Hamad Medical Corp. has 2 NM departments and 1 PET/CT Center for Diagnosis and Research, with several hybrid SPECT/CT and PET/CT cameras.

An update on computational anthropomorphic anatomical models.

The prevalent availability of high-performance computing coupled with validated computerized simulation platforms as open-source packages have motivated progress in the development of realistic anthropomorphic computational models of the human anatomy. The main application of these advanced tools focused on imaging physics and computational internal/external radiation dosimetry research. This paper provides an updated review of state-of-the-art developments and recent advances in the design of sophisticated computational models of the human anatomy with a particular focus on their use in radiation dosimetry calculations.

Assessing Bone Marrow Activity with []FLT PET in Patients with Essential Thrombocythemia and Prefibrotic Myelofibrosis: A Proof of Concept.

This study aims to assess the value of FLT-PET as a non-invasive tool to differentiate between patients with ET and Pre-PMF. This study is a pilot study to have a proof of concept only. This is a prospective, interventional study where a total of 12 patients were included.

Technical note: Surface imaging for real-time patient positioning in external radiation therapy.

Purpose: In the last few years, there has been a growing interest in surface imaging for patient positioning in external radiation therapy. The aim of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of daily patient positioning using the Azure Kinect surface imaging.

Methods: A total of 50 fractions in 10 patients including lung, pelvic, and head and neck tumors were analyzed in real time.

A study of 18F-FLT positron emission tomography/computed tomography imaging in cases of prefibrotic/early primary myelofibrosis and essential thrombocythemia.

The objectives of this research project are to study in patients with primary myelofibrosis (PMF) and Essential Thrombocythemia (ET); (1) the uptake patterns of FLT-PET (FLT-PET) and its value in diagnosing, staging, and treatment response monitoring of malignant hematopoiesis, (2) compare imaging findings from FLT-PET with bone marrow biopsy (standard of care), and (3) associate FLT-PET uptake patterns with genetic makeup such as JAK2 (Janus kinase 2), CALR (Calreticulin), MPL (myeloproliferative leukemia protein), Triple negative disease, and allele burden.This trial is registered in ClinicalTrials.gov with number NCT03116542.

Surface imaging for real-time patient respiratory function assessment in intensive care.

Purpose: Monitoring of physiological parameters is a major concern in Intensive Care Units (ICU) given their role in the assessment of vital organ function. Within this context, one issue is the lack of efficient noncontact techniques for respiratory monitoring. In this paper, we present a novel noncontact solution for real-time respiratory monitoring and function assessment of ICU patients.

Thoracic Stent-Graft Migration: The Role of the Geometric Modifications of the Stent-Graft at 3 years.

Background: To date, clinical and experimental studies on stent graft (SG) migration have focused on aortic morphology and blood flow. However, thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) is not an instant fixation of the SG in the aortic lumen but rather a continuous process of deformation and three-dimensional change in the configuration and the geometry of the SG. The aim of this study was to analyze the geometric evolution of the aortic SG in the proximal attachment zone at midterm follow-up and its impact on the SG migration.

A 4D global respiratory motion model of the thorax based on CT images: A proof of concept.

Purpose: Respiratory motion reduces the sensitivity and specificity of medical images especially in the thoracic and abdominal areas. It may affect applications such as cancer diagnostic imaging and/or radiation therapy (RT). Solutions to this issue include modeling of the respiratory motion in order to optimize both diagnostic and therapeutic protocols.

Development of a Dedicated Rebinner with Rigid Motion Correction for the mMR PET/MR Scanner, and Validation in a Large Cohort of C-PIB Scans.

Head motion occurring during brain PET studies leads to image blurring and to bias in measured local quantities. The objective of this work was to implement a correction method for PET data acquired with the mMR synchronous PET/MR scanner. A list-mode-based motion-correction approach has been designed.

Technical Note: Kinect V2 surface filtering during gantry motion for radiotherapy applications.

Purpose: In radiotherapy, the Kinect V2 camera, has recently received a lot of attention concerning many clinical applications including patient positioning, respiratory motion tracking, and collision detection during the radiotherapy delivery phase. However, issues associated with such applications are related to some materials and surfaces reflections generating an offset in depth measurements especially during gantry motion. This phenomenon appears in particular when the collimator surface is observed by the camera; resulting in erroneous depth measurements, not only in Kinect surfaces itself, but also as a large peak when extracting a 1D respiratory signal from these data.

Geometric accuracy of the MR imaging techniques in the presence of motion.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is increasingly being used for improving tumor delineation and tumor tracking in the presence of respiratory motion. The purpose of this work is to design and build an MR compatible motion platform and to use it for evaluating the geometric accuracy of MR imaging techniques during respiratory motion. The motion platform presented in this work is composed of a mobile base made up of a flat plate and four wheels.

The first MICCAI challenge on PET tumor segmentation.

Introduction: Automatic functional volume segmentation in PET images is a challenge that has been addressed using a large array of methods. A major limitation for the field has been the lack of a benchmark dataset that would allow direct comparison of the results in the various publications. In the present work, we describe a comparison of recent methods on a large dataset following recommendations by the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) task group (TG) 211, which was carried out within a MICCAI (Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention) challenge.

Tumour functional sphericity from PET images: prognostic value in NSCLC and impact of delineation method.

Purpose: Sphericity has been proposed as a parameter for characterizing PET tumour volumes, with complementary prognostic value with respect to SUV and volume in both head and neck cancer and lung cancer. The objective of the present study was to investigate its dependency on tumour delineation and the resulting impact on its prognostic value.

Methods: Five segmentation methods were considered: two thresholds (40% and 50% of SUV), ant colony optimization, fuzzy locally adaptive Bayesian (FLAB), and gradient-aided region-based active contour.

MR-based respiratory and cardiac motion correction for PET imaging.

Purpose: To develop a motion correction for Positron-Emission-Tomography (PET) using simultaneously acquired magnetic-resonance (MR) images within 90 s.

Methods: A 90 s MR acquisition allows the generation of a cardiac and respiratory motion model of the body trunk. Thereafter, further diagnostic MR sequences can be recorded during the PET examination without any limitation.

Toward a standard for the evaluation of PET-Auto-Segmentation methods following the recommendations of AAPM task group No. 211: Requirements and implementation.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to define the requirements and describe the design and implementation of a standard benchmark tool for evaluation and validation of PET-auto-segmentation (PET-AS) algorithms. This work follows the recommendations of Task Group 211 (TG211) appointed by the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM).

Methods: The recommendations published in the AAPM TG211 report were used to derive a set of required features and to guide the design and structure of a benchmarking software tool.

Kinect2 - respiratory movement detection study.

Radiotherapy is one of the main cancer treatments. It consists in irradiating tumor cells to destroy them while sparing healthy tissue. The treatment is planned based on Computed Tomography (CT) and is delivered over fractions during several days.

4-Dimensional MRI and Attenuation Map Generation in PET/MRI with 4-Dimensional PET-Derived Deformation Matrices: Study of Feasibility for Lung Cancer Applications.

Respiratory motion may reduce accuracy in the fusion of functional and anatomic images from combined PET/MRI systems. Methodologies for the correction of respiratory motion in PET acquisitions with such systems are mostly based on the use of respiration-synchronized MRI acquisitions to derive motion fields. Existing approaches based on tagging acquisitions may introduce artifacts in MR images, whereas motion model approaches require the acquisition of training datasets.

Motion correction using anatomical information in PET/CT and PET/MR hybrid imaging.

Respiratory and cardiac motion causes qualitative and quantitative inaccuracies in whole body multi-modality imaging such as positron emission tomography coupled with computed tomography (PET/CT) and positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MRI). Solutions presented to date include motion synchronized PET and corresponding anatomical acquisitions (four dimensional [4D] PET/CT, 4D PET/MR), frequently referred to as the gating approach. This method is based on the acquisition of an external surrogate using an external device (pressure belt, optical monitoring system, spirometer etc.

Reconstruction-Incorporated Respiratory Motion Correction in Clinical Simultaneous PET/MR Imaging for Oncology Applications.

Unlabelled: Simultaneous PET and MR imaging is a promising new technique allowing the fusion of functional (PET) and anatomic/functional (MR) information. In the thoracic-abdominal regions, respiratory motion is a major challenge leading to reduced quantitative and qualitative image accuracy. Correction methodologies include the use of gated frames that lead to low signal-to-noise ratio considering the associated low statistics.

The use of a generalized reconstruction by inversion of coupled systems (GRICS) approach for generic respiratory motion correction in PET/MR imaging.

Respiratory motion is a source of artifacts in multimodality imaging such as PET/MR. Solutions include retrospective or prospective gating. They have however found limited use in clinical practice, since their increased overall acquisition duration to maintain overall image quality.