![PET-Guided Tumor Tracking](/sites/default/files/styles/coh_large/public/2023-03/yang-research-3a.png?itok=85KCGP3V)
![PET-Guided Tumor Tracking](/sites/default/files/styles/coh_medium_landscape/public/2023-03/yang-research-3b.png?h=e129f842&itok=iUzLYwsL)
PET has not been incorporated with radiotherapy systems (e.g., linac) despite the potential of biologically based targeting. New methods using on-board PET was proposed for radiation treatment, and the feasibility of a combined PET-linac system was evaluated for real-time guidance of radiotherapy for moving targets in Monte Carlo simulations. Recently, the PET-linac has been implemented as a commercial product by RefleXion Medical Inc., and UTSW purchased this system for clinical practice and research.
Before the 510k FDA approval of PET-linac, we evaluated the potential and feasibility of PET for dynamic lung tumor tracking during radiation treatment. We proposed a center of mass (CoM) tumor tracking algorithm using gated-PET images combined with a respiratory monitor and investigated the geometric accuracy of the proposed algorithm.