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A tool for validating MRI-guided strategies: a digital breathing CT/MRI phantom of the abdominal site

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Abstract

Dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is emerging as the elected image modality for organ motion quantification and management in image-guided radiotherapy. However, the lack of validation tools is an open issue for image guidance in the abdominal and thoracic organs affected by organ motion due to respiration. We therefore present an abdominal four-dimensional (4D) CT/MRI digital phantom, including the estimation of MR tissue parameters, simulation of dedicated abdominal MR sequences, modeling of radiofrequency coil response and noise, followed by k-space sampling and image reconstruction. The phantom allows the realistic simulation of images generated by MR pulse sequences with control of scan and tissue parameters, combined with co-registered CT images. In order to demonstrate the potential of the phantom in a clinical scenario, we describe the validation of a virtual T1-weighted 4D MRI strategy. Specifically, the motion extracted from a T2-weighted 4D MRI is used to warp a T1-weighted breath-hold acquisition, with the aim of overcoming trade-offs that limit T1-weighted acquisitions. Such an application shows the applicability of the digital CT/MRI phantom as a validation tool, which should be especially useful for cases unsuited to obtain real imaging data.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by AIRC, the Italian Association for Cancer Research. The author would also like to thank A. Pifferi for the help during tissue parameter estimation and G. Buizza and S. Cacciatore for the rigid registration assessment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Chiara Paganelli, Guido Baroni & Marco Riboldi

  2. Division of Radiology, Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, Milan, Italy

    Paul Summers & Massimo Bellomi

  3. Department of Experimental Physics-Medical Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich), Munich, Germany

    Chiara Gianoli

  4. Department of Radiation Oncology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich), Munich, Germany

    Chiara Gianoli

  5. Department of Oncology, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Massimo Bellomi

  6. Bioengineering Unit, Centro Nazionale di Adroterapia Oncologica, Pavia, Italy

    Guido Baroni

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  1. Chiara Paganelli
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Correspondence to Chiara Paganelli.

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Paganelli, C., Summers, P., Gianoli, C. et al. A tool for validating MRI-guided strategies: a digital breathing CT/MRI phantom of the abdominal site. Med Biol Eng Comput 55, 2001–2014 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-017-1646-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-017-1646-6

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