Segmentation of Rodent Whole-Body Dynamic PET Images: An Unsupervised Method Based on Voxel Dynamics

Positron emission tomography (PET) is a useful tool for pharmacokinetics studies in rodents during the preclinical phase of drug and tracer development. However, rodent organs are small as compared to the scanner's intrinsic resolution and are affected by physiological movements. We present a n...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on medical imaging 2008-03, Vol.27 (3), p.342-354
Main Authors: Maroy, R., Boisgard, R., Comtat, C., Frouin, V., Cathier, P., Duchesnay, E., Dolle, F., Nielsen, P.E., Trebossen, R., Tavitian, B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Animals
Artificial Intelligence
Bladder
Drugs
Filling
Image Enhancement - methods
Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted - methods
Image segmentation
Imaging phantoms
Imaging, Three-Dimensional - methods
Imaging, Three-Dimensional - veterinary
Numerical simulation
Partial volume effect
Pattern Recognition, Automated - methods
Phantoms, Imaging
physiological movements
Positron emission tomography
positron emission tomography (PET)
Positron-Emission Tomography - instrumentation
Positron-Emission Tomography - methods
Positron-Emission Tomography - veterinary
Rats
Reproducibility of Results
rodent whole-body
Rodents
segmentation
Sensitivity and Specificity
Time measurement
Whole Body Imaging - instrumentation
Whole Body Imaging - methods
Whole Body Imaging - veterinary
Whole-body PET
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Description
Summary:Positron emission tomography (PET) is a useful tool for pharmacokinetics studies in rodents during the preclinical phase of drug and tracer development. However, rodent organs are small as compared to the scanner's intrinsic resolution and are affected by physiological movements. We present a new method for the segmentation of rodent whole-body PET images that takes these two difficulties into account by estimating the pharmacokinetics far from organ borders. The segmentation method proved efficient on whole-body numerical rat phantom simulations, including 3-14 organs, together with physiological movements (heart beating, breathing, and bladder filling). The method was resistant to spillover and physiological movements, while other methods failed to obtain a correct segmentation. The radioactivity concentrations calculated with this method also showed an excellent correlation with the manual delineation of organs in a large set of preclinical images. In addition, it was faster, detected more organs, and extracted organs' mean time activity curves with a better confidence on the measure than manual delineation.
ISSN:0278-0062
1558-254X
DOI:10.1109/TMI.2007.905106