Assessment of Microsoft Kinect technology (Kinect for Xbox and Kinect for windows) for patient monitoring during external beam radiotherapy

In external beam radiotherapy, patient misalignment during set-up and motion during treatment may result in lost dose to target tissue and increased dose to normal tissues, reducing therapeutic benefit. The most common method for initial patient setup uses room mounted lasers and surface marks on the skin. We propose to use the Microsoft Kinect which can capture a complete patient skin surface representing a multiplicity of 3D points in a fast reproducible, marker-less manner. Our first experiments quantitatively assess the technical performance of Kinect technology using a planar test object and a precision motion platform to compare the performance of Kinect for Xbox and Kinect for Windows. Further experiments were undertaken to investigate the likely performance of using the Kinect during treatment to detect respiratory motion, both in supine and prone positions. The Windows version of the Kinect produces superior performance of less than 2mm mean error at 80–100 cm distance.