Respiratory motion poses great challenges to radiotherapy of liver cancer. 4D-CT is the current clinical standard for imaging organ respiratory motion. However, it 1) involves high imaging dose to the patient due to prolonged scan time, and 2) provides insufficient soft tissue contrast for imaging liver tumor. Conversely, MRI has excellent soft-tissue contrast and has no known radiation hazard for clinical imaging. MRI-based 4D imaging (4D-MRI) is thus highly desired to improve the visualization of soft-tissue respiratory motion and the delineation of target volume of moving liver tumors. At present, there is no established 4D-MRI technique for radiotherapy. Our long-term goal is to establish a novel 4D-MRI based motion management framework for radiotherapy. The objective of this application is to develop and evaluate a clinical feasible 4D-MRI technique for improved imaging of liver tumor respiratory motion. Our overall hypothesis is that integration of 4D-MRI into radiotherapy of liver cancer will allow for more accurate delineation of tumor internal target volume (ITV). This hypothesis will be tested via two specific aims.
Aim 1 will develop and validate a retrospective 4D-MRI technique that can be immediately implemented in the clinic.
Aim 2 will evaluate accuracy of the tumor ITV determined from 4D-MRI and its dosimetric impact on treatment planning in liver cancer patient cases. Successful completion of these studies will provide the foundation required to establish a novel 4D-MRI based motion management framework for radiation therapy of liver cancer, and the necessary information to support a later larger scale study to further enhance the 4D-MRI tool. The fully developed 4D-MRI technology will improve our ability to more precisely deliver radiation treatment to tumor and mitigate radiation-induced injury to surrounding normal tissues.

Public Health Relevance

Radiation therapy is used alone or in combination with surgery and/or chemotherapy as a main treatment approach for liver cancer. However, its effectiveness has been hampered by the organ respiratory motion during the treatment. Current advanced tool for imaging organ respiratory motion is mainly x-ray based imaging which not only involves high imaging dose but also is lack of soft-tissue information. The proposed research will develop MRI-based 4D imaging technique which can minimize imaging dose and provide soft- tissue motion information. This improved imaging guidance method will allow physician to more accurately determine patient-specific tumor target volume for more conformal dose planning and reduce associated treatment toxicity to the surrounding healthy tissues, resulting in improved treatment outcome of radiation therapy for liver cancer.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Type
Exploratory/Developmental Grants (R21)
Project #
1R21CA165384-01A1
Application #
8443466
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-SBIB-W (56))
Program Officer
Farahani, Keyvan
Project Start
2013-01-11
Project End
2014-12-31
Budget Start
2013-01-11
Budget End
2013-12-31
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2013
Total Cost
$325,775
Indirect Cost
$118,275
Name
Duke University
Department
Radiation-Diagnostic/Oncology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
044387793
City
Durham
State
NC
Country
United States
Zip Code
27705
Liu, Yilin; Yin, Fang-Fang; Czito, Brian G et al. (2017) Retrospective four-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging with image-based respiratory surrogate: a sagittal-coronal-diaphragm point of intersection motion tracking method. J Med Imaging (Bellingham) 4:024007
Liu, Yilin; Zhong, Xiaodong; Czito, Brian G et al. (2017) Four-dimensional diffusion-weighted MR imaging (4D-DWI): a feasibility study. Med Phys 44:397-406
Liu, Yilin; Yin, Fang-Fang; Rhee, DongJoo et al. (2016) Accuracy of respiratory motion measurement of 4D-MRI: A comparison between cine and sequential acquisition. Med Phys 43:179
Liang, Xiao; Yin, Fang-Fang; Liu, Yilin et al. (2016) A probability-based multi-cycle sorting method for 4D-MRI: A simulation study. Med Phys 43:6375
Harris, Wendy; Ren, Lei; Cai, Jing et al. (2016) A Technique for Generating Volumetric Cine-Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 95:844-53
Liu, Yilin; Yin, Fang-Fang; Chen, Nan-kuei et al. (2015) Four dimensional magnetic resonance imaging with retrospective k-space reordering: a feasibility study. Med Phys 42:534-41
Liu, Yilin; Yin, Fang-Fang; Czito, Brian G et al. (2015) T2-weighted four dimensional magnetic resonance imaging with result-driven phase sorting. Med Phys 42:4460-71
Liu, Yilin; Yin, Fang-Fang; Chang, Zheng et al. (2014) Investigation of sagittal image acquisition for 4D-MRI with body area as respiratory surrogate. Med Phys 41:101902
Yang, Juan; Cai, Jing; Wang, Hongjun et al. (2014) Four-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging using axial body area as respiratory surrogate: initial patient results. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 88:907-12
Yang, Juan; Cai, Jing; Wang, Hongjun et al. (2014) Is diaphragm motion a good surrogate for liver tumor motion? Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 90:952-8

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