KR101463681B1 - System for inducing respiration using biofeedback principle - Google Patents

Abstract

The respiration induction system using the biofeedback principle in the radiation therapy according to the present invention is a respiration induction system for processing a biofeedback treated respiration-induced signal image, wherein the process for treating the respiration-induced signal image comprises: (a) Obtaining a respiration-inducing signal image of the treatment area using an imaging device on a treatment area of the patient; (b) binarizing the image region using the threshold value for the image obtained in the step (a); (c) determining whether the binarized image region from the step (b) is distorted; (d) synthesizing the image; (e) determining whether or not region separation is necessary for the synthesized image; And (f) performing pattern matching on the respiration-induced signal image.
In the radiation therapy according to the present invention, the respiratory induction system using the biofeedback principle can control the patient's own motion in a place where stable breathing or movement is required, so that individual can control the stability of the radiation therapy process have.

Description

[0001] The present invention relates to a system for inducing respiration using biofeedback,

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention [0001] The present invention relates to a respiration induction system using a biofeedback principle in a radiation therapy, and more particularly, to a respiration induction system using a biofeedback principle in which a patient's measured respiration cycle and respiration pattern are imaged, The present invention relates to a respiration induction system using a biofeedback principle in treatment.

One of the important factors to be aware of in patients with 4-D radiation therapy or respiration synchrotron radiation therapy is that the long-term movement during radiation therapy must be constant. There are various kinds of exercise factors affecting the long-term movement of the human body, but maintaining breathing consistently is a very important factor in radiation therapy.

Radiation therapy using a medical radiotherapy device may be the most important factor in intensively examining the radiation to the tumor site and minimizing the dose to the surrounding normal tissue. In particular, it is indispensable to control the beam according to the fluctuation of the organs of the organs generated during the radiation therapy.

Although many devices are used to achieve preconditions related to respiration in the above-mentioned radiation therapy, most of these devices can not identify the patient's own breathing state using only the guide signal, In fact.

To this end, the conventional radiation therapy technique mainly uses a gating method for controlling a medical radiotherapy apparatus using a real-time position management (RPM) system. However, the success of this technique is in the stability of respiration in patients with radiation therapy, and respiration synchrotron radiation therapy in patients with unstable respiration has the problem that the treatment time is long. In addition, since the RPM system is applied to the respiration synchrotron radiation therapy by setting the phase of the respiration with only the respiratory cycle, there is no consideration of the respiratory pattern or the respiration amount, and the accuracy of the treatment becomes very low.

Particularly, the body stereotactic radiotherapy for moving organs has a significantly longer treatment time and a greater risk of side effects than other radiotherapy. To solve this problem, train the patient to have a stable respiratory cycle and volume, Things become more important.

In addition, in the case of patients with radiation-related diseases with lung-related diseases, it is practically very difficult to maintain a stable respiratory cycle and respiratory volume. Therefore, a respiration-synchronous radiation therapy technique in which radiation is irradiated only in a stable respiratory state, In practice, there is a real need for an auxiliary device for breathing to be necessary.

A training control method using biofeedback will be described with reference to a conventional patent document. Korean Patent No. 10-0601932 and No. 10-0943180, collecting and analyzing all commonly measured bio-signals and appropriately providing them to patients using a bio-feedback system, Or allowing the body to relax and, as a result, allowing the user to self-adjust.

Meanwhile, the conventional patent documents have a problem in providing various image processing methods according to a measurement environment in processing the collected biometric information using a video signal. In other words, there is no description of a video tracking algorithm that may be possible by preprocessing and properly recombining the images collected from the human body, so that there is a difficulty in accurately matching patterns between guided breathing and actual breathing.

Korean Patent No. 10-0601932 Korean Patent No. 10-0943180

In order to solve the above problems, an object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus and a method for performing an accurate preprocessing process in which an appropriate threshold value is given to an image actually collected from a human body during a radiation treatment process, The present invention provides a respiration induction system using a biofeedback principle.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a respiration induction system using a biofeedback principle in a radiation therapy, the respiration induction signal processing method comprising: (A) acquiring a respiration-inducing signal image of the treatment site using an imaging device at a treatment site of a patient requiring radiation therapy; (b) binarizing the image region using the threshold value for the image obtained in the step (a); (c) determining whether the binarized image region from the step (b) is distorted; (d) synthesizing the image; (e) determining whether or not region separation is necessary for the synthesized image; And (f) performing pattern matching on the respiration-induced signal image.

The step of processing the respiration-induced signal image may further include the step of performing (g) edge detection when there is distortion in the binarized image region in the step (c) Lt; / RTI >

In the step (g), it is preferable that the mask used for the contour detection employs at least one of a group including Prewitt, Roberts, Sobel, Laplacian, and Canny.

The step of processing the breathing guidance signal image may further comprise the steps of: (h) setting a region of interest with respect to the breathing guidance signal image, when the region separation of the synthesized image is required in the step (e); And (i) designating a template image for the set region of interest.

As described above, the respiration induction system using the biofeedback principle in the radiation therapy according to the present invention can control the patient's own movement in a place where stable breathing or movement of the patient is required, Stability can be ensured. Specifically, the similarity between the signal for inducing the breathing and the biofeedback breathing is analyzed, and the similarity between the breathing during the actual treatment and the induced breathing during the simulated treatment is analyzed.

In particular, if the patient is unable to control his / her own movement, he / she can directly control and alarm the equipment for unstable movements, thereby ensuring safe treatment.

In addition, the present invention improves the rule of motion of the human body in order to improve the quality of the computed tomography images in the simulated medical treatment before radiotherapy in the 4-dimensional radiotherapy patient.

1 is a schematic view of a video tracking program used in a breathing induction apparatus using a biofeedback principle according to the present invention;
Figure 2 is a schematic diagram of a biofeedback system using individual breathing patterns, and
FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a process of matching a pattern between a breathing induction signal and a biofeedback signal by processing an image collected in a breathing induction device using the biofeedback principle according to the present invention.

These and other objects, features and other advantages of the present invention will become more apparent by describing in detail preferred embodiments of the present invention with reference to the accompanying drawings. The embodiments described are provided by way of illustration for the purposes of illustration and are not intended to limit the scope of the invention.

Hereinafter, a respiration induction system using a biofeedback principle in a radiation therapy according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Explanation of the configuration of respiratory guidance system using biofeedback principle

The breathing induction system according to the present invention can construct a patient education system for inducing stable and regular breathing in simulated radiotherapy or actual radiotherapy using the biofeedback principle or real time respiration monitoring using image tracking technique and image processing Do.

The present invention displays a biofeedback signal using a visual device to a patient to enable stable and regular respiratory induction, or in conjunction with a radiotherapy device, to directly control the therapy device or to generate an alarm.

In the present invention, respiration-induced signals can be diversified into sine-type signals commonly used in the past, as well as patient-specific signals according to respiration models.

The present invention analyzes and displays an image obtained in real time from a patient, thereby realizing a real-time technology with less than 50 msec, preferably less than 30 msec, and displaying real situations to help the user's effective judgment.

In addition, the speed of real-time technology is optimized by using the ROI (region of interest) setting method for effective tracking analysis, and the automatic control technology of the therapeutic device is implemented according to the increase of irregularity through the PID automatic control method, .

In addition, the time difference between the respiration induction signal and the biofeedback signal is set to induce breathing best suited for the initial induced breathing, and breathing through the real time biofeedback signal can be confirmed.

Meanwhile, the present invention is not limited to the use of an image for receiving and analyzing a respiration signal, but also includes another type of recognition method capable of receiving the respiration signal.

Hereinafter, a video tracking program, image processing, and pattern matching process for realizing the features of the present invention will be described.

First, referring to FIG. 1, a video tracking program used in a breathing induction system using a biofeedback principle according to the present invention will be described.

The image tracking program according to the present invention acquires an image from a treatment region of a patient and performs necessary image processing on the obtained image. After the image processing, image tracking is performed for accurate comparison and analysis with the object requiring confirmation. When the image tracking is completed, the result value is derived and the derived result is stored.

Next, referring to FIG. 2, a biofeedback system using individual breathing patterns to induce regular respiration will be described.

(10), and a respiration signal generated during the breathing process is acquired (20). The signal is processed 30 to facilitate tracking of the acquired respiration signal, the signal is tracked 40 based on the processed signal, and the result is then derived based on the tracked signal 50). Based on the result, the optimal respiration pattern is found (60), and the derived respiration pattern is guided to the respiratory instability patient (70).

Both FIGS. 1 and 2 provide a stable and regular respiration during the radiation therapy through a series of processes using the biofeedback principle.

Next, a description will be made of a process of performing image processing and pattern matching applied in the present invention with reference to a time-sequentially arranged flowchart of FIG.

First, an image of a treatment site is acquired by using an imaging device such as a CCD or an infrared camera on a treatment site of a patient who is going to undergo a radiation treatment process (S10).

After step S10, the image is pre-processed using a binarization method and a threshold value to improve the accuracy of the image tracking technology (S20). In the present invention, the obtained image is converted into a binary image having digital values of '0' and '1', a predetermined threshold value is determined, and if the pixel value of the acquired image is larger than a threshold value, , And if the pixel value of the corresponding image is smaller than the threshold value, the binarization method of binarizing to black can be applied.

In step S30, the control unit determines whether there is distortion in the obtained image after the binarization step using the threshold value in step S20. In step S30, it may be determined that there is a region where the visual image quality is relatively lowered in the entire image, the image is overlapped, or the image is significantly out of comparison with the basic shape of the object to be measured.

In step S30, it is possible to perform egde detection as a countermeasure in the case where it is determined that there is distortion in the image. It is possible to independently detect contour lines that are not visually boundaries appearing in the image region of the distorted image, thereby preventing deterioration of image quality due to application of the high frequency enhancement filter and enhancing the line boundary without loss to obtain a final image with improved image quality (S40 ). The contour detection is performed by using a change in the brightness value by the differential operator, and there are various kinds of algorithms. Further, it is also possible to obtain differential values by using a partial differential calculation. It is more effective to perform quick calculation using a mask rather than a direct calculation in programming, and the characteristic of the mask is that the sum of all pixels in the mask is 0 . Here, the mask used for the contour detection may employ any one or more of a group including Prewitt, Roberts, Sobel, Laplacian, Canny, and the like.

If there is no distortion in the image in step S30 or after step S40, the image is synthesized (S50). In step S50, an optimized image can be tracked by selectively applying various image processing methods to the preprocessed images in step S20.

During step S50, it is determined whether or not region separation is necessary for the treatment area of the patient who is going to undergo the radiation treatment procedure (S60).

If it is determined in step S60 that the region separation is necessary, an ROI (region of interest) is set to optimize the speed of the real-time technology, thereby enabling effective tracking analysis. That is, an image of a specific tumor site requiring radiotherapy can be set as an area of interest (S70).

When the image of the specified human body part set as the region of interest is designated in step S70, a template image is set for this image (S80). Here, the template image can be understood as a reference image for the set region of interest.

If it is determined in step S60 that the region separation is not required, or if the ROI and the template image are set in steps S70 and S80, pattern matching is performed in step S90.

Specifically, the similarity between the breathing generated by the patient and the biofeedback respiration is analyzed and displayed using the image synthesized in the step S50 or the region of interest and the template image in the steps S70 and 80, So that the similarity of respiration can be easily grasped.

On the other hand, the present invention can function as a self-breathing exercise device using a mobile device. Specifically, a variety of mobile devices, including smartphones and PDAs, are used to enhance patient mobility and allow the patient to practice breathing to become accustomed to self-breathing. In addition, after acquiring the patient-customized breathing pattern at the time of the mock therapy prior to the actual radiotherapy, the patient is able to increase the regularity of the breathing for a certain period of time between the simulated treatment and the actual radiotherapy.

In addition, the present invention improves the rule of motion of the human body in order to improve the quality of the computed tomography images in the simulated medical treatment before the radiation therapy in the 4-dimensional radiation therapy patient.

As described above, in the radiation therapy according to the present invention, the breathing induction system using the biofeedback principle can be controlled by the individual while watching the movement of the patient himself or herself in a place where stable breathing or movement of the patient is required. Stability can be ensured.

Although the preferred embodiments of the present invention have been described, the present invention is not limited to the specific embodiments described above. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that numerous modifications and variations can be made in the present invention without departing from the spirit or scope of the appended claims. And equivalents should also be considered to be within the scope of the present invention.

Claims (4)

In a respiratory guidance system for processing a biofeedback treated respiration-induced signal image,
Wherein the step of processing the respiration-
(a) acquiring a plurality of respiration-inducing signal images of the treatment site using an imaging device at a treatment site of a patient requiring radiation therapy;
(b) binarizing the image region using the threshold value for the image obtained in the step (a);
(c) judging whether or not the binarized image region from the step (b) is distorted and processing the binarized image region using edge detection;
(d) synthesizing the plurality of processed images;
(f) performing pattern matching on the synthesized image and a predetermined template image according to a predetermined method;
≪ / RTI >
Breathing induction system using biofeedback principle in radiation therapy.
delete The method according to claim 1,
Wherein in the step (c), the mask used for the contour detection employs at least one of a group including Prewitt, Roberts, Sobel, Laplacian, and Canny.
Breathing induction system using biofeedback principle in radiation therapy.
The method according to claim 1,
Wherein the step of processing the respiration-
If region separation is required for the synthesized image,
(h) setting a region of interest for the respiration-derived signal image; And
(i) setting a template image for the set region of interest as an image for pattern matching in the step (f).
Breathing induction system using biofeedback principle in radiation therapy.

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