Research and application of a fast 3D-reconstruction method in accurate radiotherapy treatment planning system

In radiotherapy treatment planning, in order to delivery of a high dose to the tumor accurately while maintaining an acceptably low dose to the normal tissues, particularly those adjacent to the target, it is necessary to reconstruct the three dimensional anatomical structure from planar contour information. The existing methods could not satisfy the clinical demand in terms of the speed and accuracy. By improving the isosurface extraction algorithm, we designed a fast 3D-reconstruction algorithm pipeline implemented by Visualization Tool Kit (VTK). A serial of test results from real patient image dataset show that this method could reconstruct the surface smoothly and evade the 'ladder effect' effectively. The number of points and triangles had been reduced in great extent. The rendering time had been decreased from 8 seconds to less than 3 seconds by comparing with standard iso-extraction algorithm. On the premise of preserving the original anatomical structure, this method improved the reconstruction effect, accelerated the rendering speed and it would be applied to not only accurate radiotherapy treatment planning system but also other fields that need 3D reconstruction.