title: Automatic verification of SSD and generation of respiratory signal with lasers in radiotherapy: a preliminary study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Source to surface distance (SSD) plays a very important role in external beam radiotherapy treatment verification. In this study, a simple technique has been developed to verify the SSD automatically with lasers. The study also suggests a methodology for determining the respiratory signal with lasers.
  
  
  METHODS
  Two lasers, red and green are mounted on the collimator head of a Clinac 2300 C/D linac along with a camera to determine the SSD. A software (SSDLas) was developed to estimate the SSD automatically from the images captured by a 12-megapixel camera. To determine the SSD to a patient surface, the external body contour of the central axis transverse computed tomography (CT) cut is imported into the software. Another important aspect in radiotherapy is the generation of respiratory signal. The changes in the lasers separation as the patient breathes are converted to produce a respiratory signal. Multiple frames of laser images were acquired from the camera mounted on the collimator head and each frame was analyzed with SSDLas to generate the respiratory signal.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The SSD as observed with the ODI on the machine and SSD measured by the SSDlas software was found to be within the tolerance limit. The methodology described for generating the respiratory signals will be useful for the treatment of mobile tumors such as lung, liver, breast, pancreas etc.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The technique described for determining the SSD and the generation of respiratory signals using lasers is cost effective and simple to implement.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110 029, India. prabhakar_smr@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Ramachandran
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Prabhakar
mesh_terms: D001331:Automation; D006801:Humans; D007834:Lasers; D011878:Radiotherapy / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012119:Respiration