Respiration-induced motion of the abdomen and thorax can hinder the accurate determination of treatment margins for target tumors, as needed for radiotherapy planning. Furthermore, techniques using patient breath holds and abdominal compression can have consequences for patient comfort and treatment plan reproducibility.
In order to overcome these challenges, Siemens Healthineers introduces 4D MRI – RT Respiratory Self-Gating, a technique that captions organ motion in the abdomen and thorax under free-breathing with excellent soft tissue contrast and automatic respiratory phase sorting during the entire acquisition time, all without the need for external respiratory devices or surrogates.