Systems and methods for patient monitoring for radiotherapy

Inventors

LAURENCE, JR., Thomas Leroy • JANARDHANAN, Jayakrishnan

Assignees

RefleXion Medical Inc

Abstract

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for real-time monitoring of patient position and/or location during a radiation treatment session. Images acquired of a patient during a treatment session can be used to calculate the patient's position and/or location with respect to the components of the radiation therapy system. One variation of a radiation therapy system includes a circular gantry with a rotatable ring coupled to a stationary frame, a therapeutic radiation source mounted on the rotatable ring, and a patient-monitoring imaging system mounted on the rotatable ring. The patient-monitoring system may have one or more image sensors or cameras disposed on the rotatable ring within a bore region of the radiation therapy system, and may be configured to acquire image data as the ring rotates.

Core Innovation

The disclosed radiation therapy system includes a circular gantry with a stationary frame and a rotatable ring coupled to the stationary frame. A therapeutic radiation source and an imaging system are coupled to the rotatable ring, and the imaging system includes a reflectometer configured to acquire image data of a patient area during rotation of the ring, enabling patient monitoring while the gantry rotates.

A controller processes and stores the acquired image data and uses it to calculate a range of motion or generate 3-D models of a patient at different time intervals. The controller compares the calculated range of motion, or a positional difference derived from the 3-D models, with a motion envelope and generates a notification when the calculated range of motion or identified difference exceeds the motion envelope.

The motion envelope is determined based on whether the patient platform is moving or stationary, and includes a first range of motion for a moving patient platform and a second range of motion for a stationary patient platform. The controller modeling further supports generating a 3-D model at a specified time interval using images acquired during that interval and comparing it to a 3-D model at an earlier time interval to identify a positional difference.

Claims Coverage

Two independent claims are present: clm-00001 and clm-00033. Both claims cover an imaging-enabled rotating gantry system with a reflectometer, controller-based motion determination against a motion envelope, and notification generation when the envelope is exceeded; the key difference is that clm-00001 uses a calculated range of motion while clm-00033 uses 3-D model comparison across time intervals to identify a positional difference.

Across both independent claims, the inventive coverage centers on using a rotating circular gantry with a reflectometer-based imaging system to monitor patient motion, using a controller to compute motion or positional differences from acquired image data, comparing those results to a motion envelope, and generating a notification when the envelope is exceeded, with the motion envelope having different ranges depending on whether the patient platform is moving or stationary.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications