Intrafractional motion of patients, such as respiratory motion during radiation treatment, is an important issue in image-guided radiotherapy. The accuracy of the radiation treatment decreases as the motion range increases. We developed a control system for a robotic patient immobilization system that enables to reduce the range of tumor motion by compensating the tumor motion. Fusion technology, combining robotics and mechatronics, was developed and applied in this study. First, a small-sized prototype was established for use with an industrial miniature robot. The patient immobilization system consisted of an optical tracking system, a robotic couch, a robot controller, and a control program for managing the system components. A multi speed and position control mechanism with three degrees of freedom was designed. The parameters for operating the control system, such as the coordinate transformation parameters and calibration parameters, were measured and evaluated for a prototype device. After developing the control system using the prototype device, a feasibility test on a full-scale patient immobilization system was performed, using a large industrial robot and couch. The performances of both the prototype device and the realistic device were evaluated using a respiratory motion phantom, for several patterns of respiratory motion. For all patterns of motion, the root mean squared error of the corresponding detected motion trajectories were reduced by more than 40%. The proposed system improves the accuracy of the radiation dose delivered to the target and reduces the unwanted irradiation of normal tissue.

KeywordsRobotics, Mechatronics, Patient immobilizer, Respiratory motion, SBRT