MRI: Development of a Vision-based Real-Time Body Motion Tracking Instrument for Advanced Radiation Treatment

This cross disciplinary project for instrument development combines the fields of computer vision (and computer science overall) with radiation therapy and behavioral sciences. This project is a joint venture among the Medical School, the Psychology Department, and the Institute of Technology. The goal is to develop a minimally invasive, full-body, patient tracking system to be used with the helical tomotherapy system currently in use at the institution. The purpose of this effort is to detect when a patient becomes misaligned during radiation treatment. Adding visual feedback to the helical tomotherapy treatment should improve the safety of the patient, reduce the considerable treatment time, and improve the cure rate. It should be noted that the proposed instrument has a wide variety of implications for other forms of radiation therapy and medical systems that require a specific patient pose with respect to the medical device. In order for these devices to revolutionize the treatment field, the interaction of the patient with the device should be studied from a behavioral sciences point of view. In this project, behavioral sciences will play an important role in capturing the behavioral patterns exhibited when the patient is in treatment, and in devising new patient placement protocols with profound impacts on cancer treatment.

During the early stages of this development, the proposed instrument will not be used in human trials, focusing instead on the following tasks:

- Development of efficient computer vision algorithms (structured light) for detecting the patient's movements in a non-intrusive way that simultaneously offers the possibility for creating a closed-loop helical tomography instrument,

- Selection of features, so cumbersome reflective markers are no longer needed,

- Creation of the probabilistic framework necessary to utilize the features found from multiple calibrated cameras to determine the probability distribution of likely body positions,

- Incorporation of behavioral science research that utilizes cyber-enabled principles to create patient-friendly medical devices and treatments, and

- Experimental validation of the proposed instrument and improvement of the instrument with cyber-enabled behavioral science input.

Broader Impacts:

This project introduces computer vision methodologies/hardware and cyber-enabled behavioral science research to radiation therapy with the objective of having safer and more effective radiation treatment. It may cause fundamental changes in the way that humans and medical devices interact. Educational programs will enable training to the instrument/methodologies. Some of these methodologies will be included in the curriculum. A website will be developed for dissemination of findings. Users from around the world will be given access. Outreach programs involving demonstrations to pertinent groups will be created.