Respiration-Induced Organ Motion Compensation: A Review

Motion of organs in the abdominal and thoracic cavity caused by respiration is a major issue that affects a wide range of clinical diagnoses or treatment outcomes, including radiotherapy, high-intensity focused ultrasound ablation, and many generalized percutaneous needle interventions. These motions pose significant challenges in accurately reaching the target even for the experienced clinician.

This review was conducted through comprehensive search on IEEE Explore, Google Scholar, and PubMed.

Diverse methods have been proposed to compensate for this motion effect to enable effective surgical operations. This review paper aims to examine the current respiratory motion compensation techniques used across the clinical procedures of radiotherapy, high-intensity focused ultrasound, and percutaneous needle procedures.

The complexity of respiratory-induced organ motion and diversity of areas for which compensation can be applied allows for a variety of methods to be implemented. This review aims to serve as inspiration for the future development of new systems to achieve clinical relevance.