• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.85-93
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• 2012

Purpose: It is essential to minimize the respiratory-induced motion of involved organs in the Tomotherapy for tumor located in the chest and abdominal region. However, the application of breathing control system to Tomotherapy is limited. This study was aimed to investigate the possible application of the ABCHES system and its efficacy as a means of breathing control in the tomotherapy treatment. Materials and Methods: Five subjects who were treated with a Hi-Art Tomotherapy system for lung, liver, gallbladder and pancreatic tumors. All patients undertook trained on two breathing methodes using an ABCHES, free breathing methode and shallow breathing methode. When the patients could carry out the breathing control, 4D-CT scan was a total of 10 4D tomographic images were acquired. A radiologist resident manually drew the tumor region, including surrounding nomal organs, on each of CT images at the inhalation phase, the exhalation phase and the 40% phase (mid-inhalation) and average CT image. Those CT images were then exported to the Tomotherapy planning station. Data exported from the Tomotherapy planning station was analyzed to quantify characteristics of dose-volume histograms and motion of tumors. Organ motions under free breathing and shallow breathing were examined six directions, respectively. Radiation exposure to the surrounding organs were also measured and compared. Results: Organ motion is in the six directions with more than a 5 mm displacement. A total of 12 Organ motions occurred during free breathing while organ motions decreased to 2 times during shallow breathing under the use of Abches. Based on the quantitative analysis of the dose-volume histograms shallow breathing showed lower resulting values, compared to free breathing, in every measure. That is, treatment volume, the dose of radiation to the tumor and two surrounding normal organs (mean doses), the volume of healthy tissue exposed to radiation were lower at the shallow breathing state. Conclusion: This study proposes that the use of ABCHES is effective for the Tomotherapy treatment as it makes shortness of breathing easy for patients. Respiratory-induced tumor motion is minimized, and radiation exposure to surrounding normal tissues is also reduced as a result.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.140-143
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• 2004

To appropriately control or compensate breathing motion of targets in thorax or abdomen during radiotherapy is still demanding. Our idea is that a visual signal may help regulate patient's breathing pattern, by controlling its amplitude and cycle. The system involving breathing control with a visual signal for aperture maneuver with controlled breath (AMC) has been developed. A thermocouple is used to detect the temperature change due to patient's breathing. The system also consists of a mask, in which the thermocouple is installed, an operational amplifier, a converter, etc. Patients were instructed to control their respiration by breathing following the visuals signal, as watching a display that shows both patients' current breathing pattern and the signal. The patterns of patients' controlled breathing and the signals coincided well. Therefore, when AMC technique is applied, a target moves in the range that is 60 % less than the range of free breathing motion with the help of the system and so target margins can be reduced significantly. This study reveals that a visual signal is not only useful to control patient's breathing but also clinically effective.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.29-40
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• 1971

Oxygen consumption, pulmonary ventilation, heart rate, and breathing frequency were measured on 8 men walking on a treadmill carrying load of 9 kg on hand, back, or head. Besides measurements were made on subjects carrying loads of 2.6 kg each on both feet. The speed of level walking was 4, 5, and 5.5km/hr and a fixed speed off km/hr with grades of 0, 3, 6, and 9%. Comparisons were made between free walking without load and walking with various types of loads. The following results were obtained. 1. In level or uphill walking the changes in oxygen consumption, pulmonary ventilation, breathing frequency and heart rate were smallest in back load walking, and largest in hand load walking. The method of back load was most efficient and hand load was the least efficient. The energy cost in head load walking was smaller than that of in hand load walking. It was assumed that foot load costed more energy than hand load. 2. In level walking the measured parameters increased abruptly at the speed of 5.5 km/hr. Oxygen consumption in a free walking at 4 km/hr was 11.4ml/kg b.wt., and 13.1 ml/kg b.wt. 5.5 km/hr, and in a hand load walking at 4 km/hr was 13.9, and 18.8 ml/kg b. wt. at 5.5 km/hr. 3. In uphill walking oxygen consumption and other parameters increased abruptly at the grade of 6%. Oxygen consumption at 4 km/hr and 0% grade was 11.4 ml/kg b. wt., 13.6 at 6% grade, and 16.21/kg b. wt. at 9% grade in a free walking. In back load walking oxygen consumption at 4km/hr and 0% grade was 12.3 ml/kg b.wt.,14.9 at 6% grade, and 18.7 ml/kg b.wt. In hand load walking the oxygen consumption was the greatest, namely, 13.9 at 0% grade, 17.9 at 6%, and 20.0 ml/kg b. wt. at 9% grade. 4. Both in level and uphill walking the changes in pulmonary ventilation and heart rate paralleled with oxygen consumption. 5. The changes in heart rate and breathing frequency in hand load were characteristic. Both in level and uphill walk breathing frequency increased to 30 per minute when a load was held on hand and showed a small increase as the exercise became severe. In the other method of load carrying the Peak value of breathing frequency was less than 30 Per minute. Heart rate showed 106 beats/minute even at a speed of 4 km/hr when a load was held on hand, whereas, heart rate was between, 53 and 100 beats/minute in the other types of load carriage. 6. Number of strides per minute in level walking increased as the speed increased. At the speed floater than 5 km/hr number of strides per minute of load carrying walk was greater than that of free walking. In uphill walk number of strides per minute decreased as the grade increased. Number of strides in hand load walk was greatest and back load walk showed the same number of strides as the free walk.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2014.05a
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• pp.833-835
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• 2014

On this study, we have developed respiratory training system to improve stability of respiration, one of the most important factors of Respiratory Gated Radiation Therapy, RGRT. Respiratory training system that we developed was applied to personal respiratory cycle so that it could provide comfortable respiratory triggering to patients. To give sufficient time for practice, we used modular portable device to practice easily and to be undetered by time and place. We have intended to improve efficiency and accuracy by providing it to patients. We are now planning to conduct experiment of 10 peoples to find out stability, degree of durability betterment and regularity of respiration when patients are using respiratory training system. There are three kinds of breathing style. First is free breathing that Individual patients can breathe freely. Second is guide breathing that patients apply to personal respiration cycle through the guiding sight and hearing program. Third is prediction breathing that patients breathe after respiratory training without guiding sight and hearing program. By using these 3 data of respiration method, we have evaluated usability of respiratory training system by quantitatively analyzing respiration period, amplitude and area's variation.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.72-78
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• 2014

The aim of the study is to test a hypothesis that quasi-breath-hold (QBH) biofeedback improves the residual respiratory motion management in gated 3D thoracic MR imaging, reducing respiratory motion artifacts with insignificant acquisition time alteration. To test the hypothesis five healthy human subjects underwent two gated MR imaging studies based on a T2 weighted SPACE MR pulse sequence using a respiratory navigator of a 3T Siemens MRI: one under free breathing and the other under QBH biofeedback breathing. The QBH biofeedback system utilized the external marker position on the abdomen obtained with an RPM system (Real-time Position Management, Varian) to audio-visually guide a human subject for 2s breath-hold at 90% exhalation position in each respiratory cycle. The improvement in the upper liver breath-hold motion reproducibility within the gating window using the QBH biofeedback system has been assessed for a group of volunteers. We assessed the residual respiratory motion management within the gating window and respiratory motion artifacts in 3D thoracic MRI both with/without QBH biofeedback. In addition, the RMSE (root mean square error) of abdominal displacement has been investigated. The QBH biofeedback reduced the residual upper liver motion within the gating window during MR acquisitions (~6 minutes) compared to that for free breathing, resulting in the reduction of respiratory motion artifacts in lung and liver of gated 3D thoracic MR images. The abdominal motion reduction in the gated window was consistent with the residual motion reduction of the diaphragm with QBH biofeedback. Consequently, average RMSE (root mean square error) of abdominal displacement obtained from the RPM has been also reduced from 2.0 mm of free breathing to 0.7 mm of QBH biofeedback breathing over the entire cycle (67% reduction, p-value=0.02) and from 1.7 mm of free breathing to 0.7 mm of QBH biofeedback breathing in the gated window (58% reduction, p-value=0.14). The average baseline drift obtained using a linear fit was reduced from 5.5 mm/min with free breathing to 0.6 mm/min (89% reduction, p-value=0.017) with QBH biofeedback. The study demonstrated that the QBH biofeedback improved the upper liver breath-hold motion reproducibility during the gated 3D thoracic MR imaging. This system can provide clinically applicable motion management of the internal anatomy for gated medical imaging as well as gated radiotherapy.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.167-174
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• 2012

Purpose: The respiration is one of the most important factors in respiratory gating radiation therapy (RGRT). We have developed an unique respiratory guidance system using an audio-visual system in order to support and stabilize individual patient's respiration and evaluated the usefulness of this system. Materials and Methods: Seven patients received the RGRT at our clinic from June 2011 to April 2012. After breathing exercise with the audio-visual system, we measured their spontaneous respiration and their respiration with the audio-visual system respectively. With the measured data, we yielded standard deviations by the superficial contents of respiratory cycles and functions, and analyzed them to examine changes in their breathing before and after the therapy. Results: The PTP (peak to peak) of the standard deviations of the free breathing, the audio guidance system, and the respiratory guidance system were 0.343, 0.148, and 0.078 respectively. The respiratory cycles were 0.645, 0.345, and 0.171 respectively and the superficial contents of the respiratory functions were 2.591, 1.008, and 0.877 respectively. The average values of the differences in the standard deviations among the whole patients at the CT room and therapy room were 0.425 for the PTP, 1.566 for the respiratory cycles, and 3.671 for the respiratory superficial contents. As for the standard deviations before and after the application of the PTP respiratory guidance system, that of the PTP was 0.265, that of the respiratory cycles was 0.474, and that of the respiratory superficial contents. The results of t-test of the values before and after free breathing and the audio-visual guidance system showed that the P-value of the PTP was 0.035, that of the cycles 0.009, and that of the respiratory superficial contents 0.010. Conclusion: The respiratory control could be one of the most important factors in the RGRT which determines the success or failure of a treatment. We were able to get more stable breathing with the audio-visual respiratory guidance system than free breathing or breathing with auditory guidance alone. In particular, the above system was excellent at the reproduction of respiratory cycles in care units. Such a system enables to reduce time due to unstable breathing and to perform more precise and detailed treatment.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2019

Dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging plays an important role in non-invasive detection and characterization of primary and metastatic lesions in the liver. Recently, efforts have been made to improve spatial and temporal resolution of DCE liver MRI for arterial phase imaging. Review of recent publications related to arterial phase imaging of the liver indicates that there exist primarily two approaches: breath-hold and free-breathing. For breath-hold imaging, acquiring multiple arterial phase images in a breath-hold is the preferred approach over conventional single-phase imaging. For free-breathing imaging, a combination of three-dimensional (3D) stack-of-stars golden-angle sampling and compressed sensing parallel imaging reconstruction is one of emerging techniques. Self-gating can be used to decrease respiratory motion artifact. This article introduces recent MRI technologies relevant to hepatic arterial phase imaging, including differential subsampling with Cartesian ordering (DISCO), golden-angle radial sparse parallel (GRASP), and X-D GRASP. This article also describes techniques related to dynamic 3D image reconstruction of the liver from golden-angle stack-of-stars data.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.220-229
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• 2013

Respiratory-induced dynamic tumors render free-breathing cone-beam computed tomography (FBCBCT) images with motion artifacts complicating the task of quantifying the internal target volume (ITV). The purpose of this paper is to study the visibility of the revealed ITV when the imaging dose parameters, such as the kVp and mAs, are varied. The $Trilogy^{TM}$ linear accelerator with an On-Board Imaging ($OBI^{TM}$) system was used to acquire low-imaging-dose-mode (LIDM: 110 kVp, 20 mA, 20 ms/frame) and high-imaging-dose-mode (HIDM: 125 kVp, 80 mA, 25 ms/frame) FBCBCT images of a 3-cm diameter sphere (density=0.855 $g/cm^3$) moving in accordance to various sinusoidal breathing patterns, each with an unique inhalation-to-exhalation (I/E) ratio, amplitude, and period. In terms of image ITV contrast, there was a small overall average change of the ITV contrast when going from HIDM to LIDM of $6.5{\pm}5.1%$ for all breathing patterns. As for the ITV visible volume measurements, there was an insignificant difference between the ITV of both the LIDM- and HIDM-FBCBCT images with an average difference of $0.5{\pm}0.5%$, for all cases, despite the large difference in the imaging dose (approximately five-fold difference of ~0.8 and 4 cGy/scan). That indicates that the ITV visibility is not very sensitive to changes in imaging dose. However, both of the FBCBCT consistently underestimated the true ITV dimensions by up to 34.8% irrespective of the imaging dose mode due to significant motion artifacts, and thus, this imaging technique is not adequate to accurately visualize the ITV for image guidance. Due to the insignificant impact of imaging dose on ITV visibility, a plausible, alternative strategy would be to acquire more X-ray projections at the LIDM setting to allow 4DCBCT imaging to better define the ITV, and at the same time, maintain a reasonable imaging dose, i.e., comparable to a single HIDM-FBCBCT scan.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.135-139
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• 2013

We evaluated the effect of two kinds of breathing biofeedback technique such as audio-instruction and audio-visual biofeedback on breathing reproducibility and the CTV coverage during repeated treatment regimes in respiration-gated radiotherapy. In this study, the breathing data of nineteen lung cancer patients acquired from Medical College of Virginia (MCV) during five weeks were used. The dose evaluation algorithm was programmed in MATLAB. In the result, the CTV coverage was decreased as 30.0% due to the breathing irreproducibility for free-breathing. For audio-visual biofeedback, the CTV coverage was improved as 20.0% because patients can learn how control their breathing stably. And the audio-instruction was effective to preserve the breathing reproducibility.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.187-192
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• 2013

Purpose: We investigate the results of changed heart volume and heart dose in the left breast cancer patients while considering the movements of respiration. Materials and Methods: During the months of March and May in 2012, we designated the 10 patients who had tangential irradiation with left breast cancer in the department of radiation Oncology. With acquired images of free breathing pattern through 3D and 4D CT, we had planed enough treatment filed for covered up the whole left breast. It compares the results of the exposed dose and the volume of heart by DVH (Dose Volume histogram). Although total dose was 50.4 Gy (1.8 Gy/28 fraction), reirradiated 9 Gy (1.8 Gy/5 Fraction) with PTV (Planning Target Volume) if necessary. Results: It compares the results of heart volume and heart dose with the free breathing in 3D CT and 4D CT. It represents the maximum difference volume of heart is 40.5%. In addition, it indicated the difference volume of maximum and minimum, average are 8.8% and 27.9%, 37.4% in total absorbed dose of heart. Conclusion: In case of tangential irradiation (opposite beam) in left breast cancer patients, it is necessary to consider the changed heart volume by the respiration of patient and the heartbeat of patient.