Enhancement of Long-Term External-Internal Correlation by Phase-Shift Detection and Correction Based on Concurrent External Bellows and Internal Navigator Signals.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to enhance the correlation between external and internal respiratory motions by dynamically determining and correcting the patient-specific phase shift between external and internal respiratory waveforms acquired concurrently during respiratory-correlated 4-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging scans.

Methods and Materials: Internal-navigator and external-bellows waveforms were acquired simultaneously during 6- to 15-minute respiratory-correlated 4-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging scans in 10 healthy participants under an institutional review board-approved protocol. The navigator was placed at the right lung-diaphragm interface, and the bellows were placed ∼5 cm inferior to the sternum. Three segments of each respiratory waveform, at the beginning, middle, and end of a scan, were analyzed. Three phase-domain methods were employed to estimate the phase shift, including analytical signal analysis, phase-space oval fitting, and principal component analysis. A robust strategy for estimating the phase shift was realized by combining these methods in a weighted average and by eliminating outliers (>2 σ) caused by breathing irregularities. Whether phase-shift correction affects the external-internal correlation was evaluated. The cross-correlation between the 2 waveforms in the time domain provided an independent check of the correlation enhancement.

Results: Phase-shift correction significantly enhanced the external-internal correlation in all participants across the entire 6- to 15-minute scans. On average, the correlation increased from 0.45 ± 0.28 to 0.85 ± 0.15 for the combined method. The combined method exhibited a 99.5% success rate and revealed that the phase of the external waveform leads that of the internal waveform in all 10 participants by 57 ± 17 (1.6 ± 0.5 bins) on average. Seven participants exhibited highly reproducible phase shifts over time, evidenced by standard deviations (σ) < 4, whereas 8 < σ < 12 in the remaining 3 participants. Regardless, phase-shift correction significantly improved the correlation in all participants.

Conclusions: Correcting the phase shift estimated by the phase-domain methods provides a new approach for enhancing the correlation between external and internal respiratory motions. This strategy holds promise for improving the accuracy of respiratory-gated radiation therapy.