AbstractA nuclear cardiology system (M) for use with ascintillation camera for evaluating cardiac functionby real time measurement of the variation of radiationfrom the heart of a patient to whom is administered aradioactive tracer. The camera (C) provides datadescribing the location of individual counts repre-senting radiation events coming from the patient.The system segregates, in real time, counts corre-sponding to radiation from an electronically definedregion of interest (30) describing an investigatedpart of the heart, such as the left ventricle.Synchronized by the patient's electrocardiogram,(20) time gated memory circuitry divides each heart-beat into a series of subintervals, and storesindications of the respective amounts of radiationevents emanating from the region of interest duringeach of the subintervals. Calculating circuitry(32, 40) scans the stored information and, basedon the maximum and minimum respective radiationamounts detected in the subintervals, computes thefraction of blood ejected by the heart in each beat.A strip chart recorder (12) provides a permanentrepresentation of the curve of radiation from theregion of interest, as defined by the indicatedseries of subinterval radiation amounts.
展开▼
