Creation of 3D digital anthropomorphic phantoms which model actual patient non-rigid body motion as determined from MRI and position tracking studies of volunteers
Patient motion can cause artifacts, which can lead to difficulty in interpretation. The purpose of this study is to create 3D digital anthropomorphic phantoms which model the location of the structures of the chest and upper abdomen of human volunteers undergoing a series of clinically relevant motions. The 3D anatomy is modeled using the XCAT phantom and based on MRI studies. The NURBS surfaces of the XCAT are interactively adapted to fit the MRI studies. A detailed XCAT phantom is first developed from an EKG triggered Navigator acquisition composed of sagittal slices with a 3 × 3 × 3 mm voxel dimension. Rigid body motion states are then acquired at breath-hold as sagittal slices partially covering the thorax, centered on the heart, with 9 mm gaps between them. For non-rigid body motion requiring greater sampling, modified Navigator sequences covering the entire thorax with 3 mm gaps between slices are obtained. The structures of the initial XCAT are then adapted to fit these different motion states. Simultaneous to MRI imaging the positions of multiple reflective markers on stretchy bands about the volunteer's chest and abdomen are optically tracked in 3D via stereo imaging. These phantoms with combined position tracking will be used to investigate both imaging-data-driven and motion-tracking strategies to estimate and correct for patient motion. Our initial application will be to cardiac-perfusion SPECT imaging where the XCAT phantoms will be used to create patient activity and attenuation distributions for each volunteer with corresponding motion tracking data from the markers on the body-surface. Monte Carlo methods will then be used to simulate SPECT acquisitions, which will be used to evaluate various motion estimation and correction strategies. © 2011 SPIE.
