ALGORITHM FOR UPTAKE ASSESSMENT IN SMALL LESIONS BASED ON DYNAMIC SCINTIGRAPHY SCANS

The aim of our research was to develop an algorithm for estimation and visualisation of radiopharmaceutical uptake based on time-activity-curve (TAC) analysis in small regions of interest (ROI) in scintigraphic studies. The algorithm is implemented in Labview environment (National Instruments, Texas, Austin) and comprises the following steps: 1) delineation of grid of small ROIs over the examined tissue and corresponding TAC processing; 2) background vs tissue separation; 3) the extraction of all “suspected“ ROIs where TACs are not exponentially descendent; 4) correlation analysis between a TAC corresponding to the suspicious lesion ROI and TACs of neghboring ROIs; 5) the extraction of representative TAC for “suspected“ area by Principal Component Analysis technique; and 6) visual interpretation of radiopharmaceutical distribution in the “suspected“ area. The application of algorithm is presented in data recorded in case of histopathologically proven parathyroid tumors.