Automated contrast painting for position verification in radiotherapy

The influence of information technology in medicine has been constantly rising and represents a central part in many medical disciplines, especially radio-oncology. For the proper delivery of radiation treatment, the correct position of the patient is essential. To verify the correct position of the patient radiological images are made. In order to compare positions, contours of structures (often bones) may be used, these need to be identified and painted. The software that was provided with the linear accelerator contains a bitmap paint program, where these structures are painted manually. This manual painting of structures could be replaced by automated algorithms. However, amendments, innovations or customization of the original software are costly and difficult to achieve due to copyright, license and certification issues. The concept described here aims to get around these issues by creating an automated algorithm on the user level, with no interference of the underlying original software. This system uses the Java platform; with the help of the Java Robot class user input can be simulated. The developed tool proved to be time-saving, functional and the development could easily be accomplished and individually tailored to users needs.