A graphical user interface for automatic image registration software designed for radiotherapy treatment planning

Medical imaging forms a vital component of radiotherapy treatment planning and its evaluation. The integration of the useful data obtained from multiple imaging modalities for radiotherapy planning is achieved by image registration softwares. In radiotherapy planning systems, normally the computed tomography (CT) slices are kept as a standard upon which other modality images (magnetic resonance imaging [MRI], single photon emission computed tomography [SPECT], positron emission tomography [PET], etc.) are aligned—automatically or interactively. Following validation of successful registration, they are resampled and reformatted, as per the requirements. This paper defines the minimum requirements of automatic image registration software for 3-dimensional (3D) radiotherapy planning and describes the implementation of a suitable graphical user interface developed in Visual Basic (version 5). The automatic image registration (AIR) routines freely available from Dr. Roger P. Woods, UCLA, (USA) were used in this software. This software could be easily implemented and was easy to use for image processing suitable for radiotherapy planning systems.