Computer analysis of cardiac radionuclide data

Abstract

Gamma-camera tomography gives uniform in-plane and cross-plane resolution with propagation of the defect from one plane to another determined only by the usual camera-collimator resolution. These images may be reformatted by computer to portray slices in any orientation. Cross plane resolution is slightly worse than for the other methods, but it is uniform. The efficiency is less than either quadrant slant hole or seven pinhole apertures. Rotating cameras are not portable nor can they be used for dynamic studies.Both slant hole collimators and seven pinhole apertures distort the object in the depth dimension because of the limited viewing angle. The slant hole geometry provides somewhat better sampling and less plane-to-plane cross talk especially for the more distant planes. The full width half maximum of the depth response is not a sensitive indicator of this problem because the depth response function has very long tails.To date, best overall performance of the limited angle methods is offered by the 40[deg] slant hole collimator on a large field-of-view camera. This, however, is not a portable unit and has a field-of-view too small for about 10% of the patients.Seven pinhole imaging offers the advantage of having been well studied by a number of institution.87-90 A large pool of normal patient studies exists and the performance is well documented. Although the seven pinhole alone is suited to dynamic studies, any of the methods may be adapted to multigated studies.