Abstract—Adaptive radiotherapy is a technique intended to increase
the accuracy of radiotherapy. Currently, it is not clinically
feasible due to the time required to process the images of patient
anatomy. Hardware acceleration of image processing algorithms
may allow them to be carried out in a clinically acceptable
timeframe. This paper presents the experiences encountered
using high-level synthesis tools to design an accelerated segmentation
algorithm for computed tomography images targeted for
implementation on a System on Chip. Hardware coprocessors
and their interfaces for optimal threshold generation and 3D
mean filter algorithms were synthesised from C++ functions.
Hardware acceleration significantly outperformed the software
only implementation. The high-level synthesis tools allowed the
rapid exploration of different design options. However, hardware
design knowledge was still necessary in order to interpret the
results effectively.