DOI

https://doi.org/10.25772/TA2C-6Y94

Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1049-1774

Defense Date

2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Medical Physics

First Advisor

Elisabeth Weiss

Second Advisor

Geoffrey D. Hugo

Third Advisor

Gary E. Christensen

Fourth Advisor

Laura Padilla

Fifth Advisor

Milos Manic

Abstract

Four dimensional imaging has become part of the standard of care for diagnosing and treating non-small cell lung cancer. In radiotherapy applications 4D fan-beam computed tomography (4D-CT) and 4D cone-beam computed tomography (4D-CBCT) are two advanced imaging modalities that afford clinical practitioners knowledge of the underlying kinematics and structural dynamics of diseased tissues and provide insight into the effects of regular organ motion and the nature of tissue deformation over time. While these imaging techniques can facilitate the use of more targeted radiotherapies, issues surrounding image quality and accuracy currently limit the utility of these images clinically.

The purpose of this project is to develop methods that retrospectively compensate for anatomical motion in 4D-CBCT and correct motion artifacts present in 4D-CT to improve the image quality of reconstructed volume and assist in localizing respiration-influenced, diseased tissue and mobile structures of interest. In the first half of the project, a series of motion compensation (MoCo) workflow methods incorporating groupwise deformable image registration and projection-warped reconstruction were developed for use with 4D-CBCT imaging. In the latter half of the project, novel motion artifact observation and artifact- weighted groupwise registration-based image correction algorithms were designed and tested. Both deliverable components of this project were evaluated for their ability to enhance image quality when applied to clinical patient datasets and demonstrated qualitative and quantitative improvements over current state-of-the-art.

Rights

© Matthew J. Riblett

Is Part Of

VCU University Archives

Is Part Of

VCU Theses and Dissertations

Date of Submission

7-9-2018

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