Interactive 3D Data Registration for Proton Therapy using Touch-Based Interfaces

We are looking for a PhD student who will investigate the design of fast and precise 3D data manipulation techniques for proton therapy patient placement in cancer treatment. Based on modern touch-based interaction techniques, we aim to reduce the time needed for X-Ray imaging matching. The goal of this technique is to achieve a manual registration between radiologic 2D orthogonal images of the patient to digitally reconstructed 2D radiographs that result from 3D CTs. The challenge in this project is that this manual match needs to satisfy a precision of 1.5 mm for all spatial directions and 1.5° for all rotation axes. Currently, the match is done using a traditional, mouse-based interface in which at most two spatial dimensions are manipulated at any given time. Consequently, this process requires several iterations of matching adjustment and subsequent verification, each of which requires a new X-ray of the patient. With novel interaction techniques we are confident not only to be able to reduce the time needed per patient, but thus also to be able to treat more cancer patients in the same time. We want to achieve this progress using touch-based interfaces that allow users to control 4–5 degrees of freedom (DOF) simultaneously, as opposed to 2 DOF for mouse input. Touch input thus facilitates a much more integrated 3D data matching. Moreover, the simultaneous control of 4 or more DOF will likely result in a better matching. The investigations in this project will be based on previous work by the PhD supervisors as well as other recent advances in interactive 3D data visualization. The PhD student will examine existing methods, design new techniques, and integrate them into a new interaction platform. Moreover, the PhD student will create the new techniques in such a way that they satisfy the high precision demands of the application domain. This project thus promises not only advances in 3D interaction for scientific data analysis but also very practical advances in cancer treatment.