BERKELEY, CA (UroToday.com) - The ultrasound (US) speckle tracking technique uses standard US equipment. For this research, although we tested it using raw data extracted from the scanner -- which is not usually available -- the algorithms could eventually be implemented within a standard US scanner.
In addition to rotational motion, and possibly target deformation, both of which we expect to be able to measure in a future version of the US tracking code, we want to remove the remaining small number of tracking errors that we sometimes obtain in right-left motion estimates.
Then we would envisage testing the method in vivo, after which we can begin to work on the problem of using the motion information for control of the linear accelerator.
At the moment we are looking at whether 2D-US would be adequate to estimate intra-fraction prostate motion or whether a hybrid compromise would work. In the future, we would also like to consider whether US speckle tracking would be better than US feature tracking for prostate treatments.
Written by:
Tuathan O'Shea as part of Beyond the Abstract on UroToday.com. This initiative offers a method of publishing for the professional urology community. Authors are given an opportunity to expand on the circumstances, limitations etc... of their research by referencing the published abstract.
Joint Department of Physics, The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS foundation Trust, Sutton and London, UK
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