Cardiac PET-SPECT registration

Medical interdisciplinary project conducted together with the Nuclear Medicine Department, Klinikum Rechts der Isar der TU München.

Abstract

The purpose of this IDP is to establish a platform for accurate and robust PET-SPECT intensity-based registration. As part of this goal a tool should be created that not only allows for fully automated registration of two 3D image data sets, but also provides a graphical interface for observing the registration process and allowing for interactive changes to the registration parameters.

Motivation

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) are two nuclear imaging modalities which show complementary aspects of the myocardial perfusion and metabolism. Registration of PET and SPECT cardiac images of the same patient acquired in different days would allow a clinical advantage by effectively combining the information from both modalities, and add to the reproducibility of the current clinical workflow.

Methods

	The report covering the methods used in this project can be downloaded here

	The final project presentation can be downloaded here

Downloads

See the main project page PetSpectFusion.

Results

As part of the requirements of the project a program was developed called PetSpectFusion. The programm is written in C++ using the ITK framework for image processing and performing the actual registration, and Qt for visualization. The program can be run command line only for automated registration or with a graphical interface for interactive registration. PetSpectFusion can open / save any file type that itk can, although testing was only performed using meta header image types. It is initially optimized for cardiac PET / SPECT registration, but all the parameters are modifiable so it should be useful for other areas of medical image registration.

Here is a screenshot of the application performing a registration on two PET data sets from the same patient on the various supported platforms: