METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION AND ANALYSIS OF ANATOMIC FEATURES FROM DATA ACQUIRED IN NUCLEAR MEDICINE STUDIES

摘要

A nuclear medicine image is scanned and pixels of maximum and minimum intensity are identified and correlated with each other using constraints which are empirically determined to relate to the feature of interest (such as the heart). The information thus obtained is used to define a region of interest in which an anatomical feature of interest may be located, and to position a scintillation camera detector to carry out a nuclear medicine study at optimal positions. To properly position a subject patient, anatomical landmarks relating to a target organ are automatically identified by a computer. The landmarks are superimposed upon a nuclear medicine persistence image of the target organ. This facilitates technician identification of the target organ and also facilitates repeatability of, e.g., myocardial perfusion studies, which require that two studies be performed on a single patient at two different times. To determine the depth of the target organ, two planar nuclear medicine images of a target organ are acquired using a focussing collimator at two different heights. An anatomical landmark associated with the target organ is computer-identified in each of the images, and the depth of the target organ is determined geometrically using the differences in size between the images of the identified landmark and the differences in height.