Physics in medicine and biology
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In radiotherapy, target motion during treatment delivery can be managed either by motion inclusive margins or by gating or tracking based on intrafraction target position monitoring. If radio-opaque fiducial markers are used the required three-dimensional (3D) target position signal for gating or tracking can be obtained by simultaneous acquisition of two x-ray images from different angles. However, most treatment machines do not have such stereoscopic imaging capability. ⋯ For less frequent imaging, the accuracy of both monoscopic and stereoscopic imaging decreased due to target motion between images. Since this was most prominent for stereoscopic imaging, the difference in accuracy between monoscopic and stereoscopic imaging decreased with increasing imaging period. In conclusion, a method for estimation of the 3D target position from 2D projections has been developed and its use has been demonstrated in a simulation study of monoscopic prostate tracking.