02/2 Generic Model of Organ Motion

		Maximum Intensity Projection of the right liver lobe.

Respiratory organ motion is a complicating factor in many treatments. The shape of abdominal organs and their internal structures show large variations between subjects and the breathing pattern may vary in frequency, amplitude and shape, even for a single subject. The development of a detailed and realistic organ model permits to learn more about this motion and to improve treatments like tumour ablation or radiation therapy. Such a model will also provide valuable knowledge for other applications like realistic organ simulation or model-based segmentation.

The main goal of this work is to develop image processing methods and statistical techniques to build a generic model of organ motion. The motion of mass points within the liver is determined based on time-resolved 3D MR sequences, which are acquired using an internal gating technique developed in Co-Me phase I. This allows to analyse intra-subject and inter-subject variabilities of organ shape and motion. A further step is to develop different methods for the statistical description of the motion characteristics. A key element in this research is the reduction of the resulting model to its significant modes of variation and a practical number of parameters or predictors. Such predictors can then be used to determine the patient specific organ motion from a minimum amount of measured data. Although the model and the statistical framework are generic, they will be developed for the liver as an example organ.

Please consult the project homepage for more information.