Magnetic resonance imaging for radiotherapy planning of brain cancer patients using immobilization and surface coils

This study investigated the compatibility of a head and neck immobilization device with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The immobilization device is used to position a patient in the same way as when receiving a computed tomography (CT) scan for radiotherapy planning and radiation treatment. The advantage of using immobilization in MR is improved accuracy in CT/MR image registration enabling greater confidence in the delineation of structures. The main practical difficulty in using an immobilization device in MRI is that physical constraints make their use incompatible with head imaging coils. Within this paper we describe a method for MR imaging of the brain which allows the use of head and neck immobilization devices. By a series of image quality tests we obtained the same or better image quality as a multi-channel head coil.