GE Healthcare exhibited its Advantage 4D gating technology used with multislice CT and PET/CT to analyze respiration-induced motion in the lung, breast and other cancers at the 46th annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) this week in Atlanta.

Advantage 4D technology analyzes respiration motion using data acquired by the Varian Medical Systems' RPM (respiratory gating system) and imaging data acquired by GE's Discovery ST PET/CT scanner or Lightspeed RT wide-bore multislice CT scanner.

The imaging technology provides clinically relevant information on the true shape of anatomical objects in motion and identifies the precise range of motion, improving radiotherapy treatment planning, GE said.

The radiation therapy treatment planning tool automatically sorts image data into multiple phases of the respiratory cycle. The Advantage 4D review display then enables clinicians to view the anatomy in motion in real time. In addition, a contour visualization tool lets clinicians import contours and superimpose them over cine images in multiple planes. According to GE, this makes it easy to confirm the tumor motion and deformation relative to the planning target volume.

Early adopters of the technology include Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and Texas Oncology Cancer Center in Austin.