Multimodality medical imaging for radiotherapy treatment planning

Radiation therapy is a treatment modality which seeks to deliver radiation energy to a localized site within a patient in order to destroy a malignant tumor. One of the most important aspects of radiation dose treatment planning is the accurate localization of tumor masses. An improved methodology is proposed for the delineation of tumors. Tumor localization is performed using a regularization approach which incorporates data fusion techniques. The contour information, derived from magnetic resonance and X-ray computed tomography, is used to enhance the delineation of tumor boundaries. Directional controlled continuity stabilizers are utilized to perform the fusion task