Abstract: A method (310) and apparatus (1) are provided for planning an executing minimally invasive procedures for in-vivo placement of objects within the body of a patient. The method and apparatus enable non-invasive pre-operation virtual seed placement and dose distribution planning using visualization information showing a patient's anatomy together with a set of single point targets (182) within the patient's body and a corresponding set of trajectories (184) through the skin and body of the patient leading to the selected target points. For enhanced visualization, multiplanar reformatted images (166, 168) are derived from CT image data sets and are angled to always contain the plane of the virtual needle (300) in the pseudo-axial image and its 90 degree slice counterpart. In an implementation stage, a stereotactic arm (40) spatially referenced to the patient's data set acts a needle guide (52) and is used to locate preplanned image planes containing virtual seed deposition points.

Abstract: A cardiac gated spiral CT scanner (10) has a source of penetrating radiation (20) arranged for rotation about an examination region (14) having a central axis extending in a z direction. The source (20) emits a beam of radiation (22) that passes through the examination region (14) as the source (20) rotates. A patient support (30) holds a patient within the examination region (14) and translates the patient through the examination region (14) in the z direction while this source (20) is rotated such that the source (20) follows a helical path relative to the patient. A control processor (90) implements a patient-specific scan protocol in response to measured patient characteristics (for example, the patient's heart rate, the patient's breath hold time, and/or the range of coverage in the z direction based on the patient's anatomy) and scanner characteristics (for example, the number of detector rings, and/or the scan rate).