Studies on target motion in 4-dimensional radiotherapy are being world-widely conducted to enhance treatment
record and protection of normal organs. Prediction of tumor motion might be very useful and/or essential for
especially free-breathing system during radiation delivery such as respiratory gating system and tumor tracking
system. Neural network is powerful to express a time series with nonlinearity because its prediction algorithm
is not governed by statistic formula but finds a rule of data expression. This study intended to assess applicability
of neural network method to predict tumor motion in 4-dimensional radiotherapy. Scaled Conjugate Gradient
algorithm was employed as a learning algorithm. Considering reparation data for 10 patients, prediction by the
neural network algorithms was compared with the measurement by the real-time position management (RPM)
system. the results showed that the neural network algorithm has the excellent accuracy of maximum absolute
error smaller than 3 mm, except for the cases in which the maximum amplitude of respiration is over the range
of respiration used in the learning process of neural network. It indicates the insufficient learning of the neural
network for extrapolation. the problem could be solved by acquiring a full range of respiration before learning
procedure. Further works are programmed to verify a feasibility of practical application for 4-dimensional
treatment system, including prediction performance according to various system latency and irregular patterns
of respiration.