Determining patient 6-degrees-of-freedom motion from stereo infrared cameras during supine medical imaging

Patient motion during SPECT acquisition causes inconsistent projection data and reconstruction artifacts which can significantly affect the diagnostic accuracy of SPECT. The tracking of motion by infrared monitoring spherical reflectors (markers) on the patient's surface can provide 6-Degrees-of-Freedom (6-DOF) motion information capable of providing clinically robust correction. Object rigid-body motion can be described by 3 translational DOF and 3 rotational DOF. Polaris marker position information obtained by stereo infrared cameras requires algorithmic processing to correctly record the tracked markers, and to calibrate and map Polaris co-ordinate data into the SPECT coordinate system. Marker data then requires processing to determine the rotational and translational 6-DOF motion to ultimately be used for SPECT image corrections. This processing utilizes an algorithm involving least-squares fitting, to each other, of two 3-D point sets using singular value decomposition (SVD) resulting in the rotation matrix and translation of the rigid body centroid. We have demonstrated the ability to monitor 12 clinical patients as well as 7 markers on 2 elastic belts worn by a volunteer while intentionally moving, and determined the 3 axis Euclidian rotation angles and centroid translations. An anthropomorphic phantom with Tc-99m added to the heart, liver, and body was simultaneously SPECT imaged and motion tracked using 4 rigidly mounted markers. The determined rotation matrix and translation information was used to correct the image resulting in virtually identical "no motion" and "corrected" images. We plan to initiate routine 6-DOF tracking of patient motion during SPECT imaging in the future.