GPU Accelerated Viscous-fluid Deformable Registration for Radiotherapy

Abstract

In cancer treatment organ and tissue deformation between<br />radiotherapy sessions represent a significant challenge to op-<br />timal planning and delivery of radiation doses. Recent de-<br />velopments in image guided radiotherapy has caused a sound<br />request for more advanced approaches for image registration<br />to handle these deformations. Viscous-fluid registration is<br />one such deformable registration method. A drawback with<br />this method has been that it has required computation times<br />that were too long to make the approach clinically appli-<br />cable. With recent advances in programmability of graph-<br />ics hardware, complex user defined calculations can now be<br />performed on consumer graphics cards (GPUs). This pa-<br />per demonstrates that the GPU can be used to drastically<br />reduce the time needed to register two medical 3D images<br />using the viscous-fluid registration method. This facilitates<br />an increased incorporation of image registration in radio-<br />therapy treatment of cancer patients, potentially leading to<br />more efficient treatment with less severe side effects.