Visualization and extraction of Diagnostic Information from functional dynamic images

这项多学科研究计划旨在发展一套决策支援系统，以协助医护人员。该系统将对动态核医学图像进行重建、显示和分析。它将包括动态数据的迭代重建，四维图像的实时可视化，数据的参数分割工具及其定量分析以及新颖的用户界面。该方法可提供定量准确的诊断信息，且快速、简便、直观、实用。创新的多学科研究发展环境将使我们的合作伙伴能够直接参与重建，特征提取和可视化的新算法的开发。这是我们系统的一个关键特性。待开发算法的紧密集成将使分析阶段的信息能够反馈到重建阶段，从而提高整体结果。该方法将为医疗用户提供简单直观的访问使用标准临床设备获得的功能性患者图像，并增强其诊断能力。虽然我们的方法是通用的，适用于不同的动态临床情况，但这个项目的重点是动态单光子发射计算机断层扫描（SPECT）研究在心脏和肿瘤方面的应用。我们假设，除了3D空间信息外，使用时间信息将通过允许更准确地识别心肌灌注缺陷和更好地分离在SPECT图像中与心脏重叠的肝脏组织来增强诊断。这项技术有能力将分子成像的许多优点带到社区医院的水平，目前在昂贵和有限的正电子断层扫描中心使用，将先进成像和生物技术在癌症、神经病学和心脏病方面的革命性突破扩展到成千上万的加拿大人。我们的合作伙伴是飞利浦医疗系统和Dynapix智能成像。

This multidisciplinary research project proposes to develop a decision support system to assist medical personnel. The system will  reconstruct, display and analyze dynamic nuclear medicine images. It will include iterative reconstruction of the dynamic data, real-time visualization of four-dimensional images, tools for parametric segmentation of the data and their quantitative analysis as well as novel user interfaces. The method will provide quantitatively accurate diagnostic information, yet be fast, simple, intuitive and practical. An innovative multidisciplinary research development environment will enable our partners to participate directly in the development of novel algorithms for reconstruction, feature extraction and visualization. This is a key feature of our system. This tight integration of the algorithms to be developed will enable information from the analysis stage to be fed back into the reconstruction stage, improving the overall result. This approach will provide the medical user with a simple and intuitive access to functional patient images acquired using standard clinical equipment and enhance their diagnostic power. Although our methods will be general and applicable to different dynamic clinical situations, the particular focus of this project is on cardiac and oncological applications of dynamic single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) studies. We postulate that the use of temporal in addition to 3D spatial information will enhance diagnosis by allowing more accurate identification of myocardial perfusion defects and better separation of liver tissue overlapping that of the heart in SPECT images. This technique has the ability to bring many of the benefits of molecular imaging currently being utilized in the much more expensive and limited Positron Tomography centers to the level of the community hospital, extending the revolutionary breakthroughs in advanced imaging and biotechnology in cancer, neurology, and cardiac disease to thousands of additional Canadians. Our partners are Philips Medical Systems and Dynapix Intelligence Imaging.