Deformation field validation and inversion applied to adaptive radiation therapy

Development and implementation of chronological and anti-chronological adaptive dose accumulation strategies in adaptive intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) for head-and-neck cancer. An algorithm based on Newton iterations was implemented to efficiently compute inverse deformation fields (DFs). Four verification steps were performed to ensure a valid dose propagation: intra-cell folding detection finds zero or negative Jacobian determinants in the input DF; inter-cell folding detection is implemented on the resolution of the output DF; a region growing algorithm detects undefined values in the output DF; DF domains can be composed and displayed on the CT data. In 2011, one patient with nonmetastatic head and neck cancer selected from a three phase adaptive DPBN study was used to illustrate the algorithms implemented for adaptive chronological and anti-chronological dose accumulation. The patient received three 18F-FDG-PET CTs prior to each treatment phase and one CT after finalizing treatment. Contour propagation and DF generation between two consecutive CTs was performed in Atlas-based autosegmentation (ABAS). Deformable image registration based dose accumulations were performed on CT1 and CT4. Dose propagation was done using combinations of DFs or their inversions. We have implemented a chronological and anti-chronological dose accumulation algorithm based on DF inversion. Algorithms were designed and implemented to detect cell folding.