GPU Accelerated Viscous-fluid Deformable Registration for Radiotherapy

Abstract

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