Automated detection of the brain intercommissural line from SPECT data

The identification of the intercommissural (AC-PC) line is important to achieve registration of nuclear medicine images with a brain atlas. We have adapted to single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and optimized a method for automatic detection of this line in positron emission tomography (PET). Briefly, the mid-sagittal plane of the brain is first determined using a similarity criterion between the left and right lobe of the brain. Then, four internal landmarks are detected using diverse image processing and numerical techniques such as edge detection, interpolation and function approximation. Accuracy of the method were previously validated in PET and results in SPECT are in agreement with the PET studies.