Automated analysis of bone scintigrams

Bone scintigraphy is the most frequently used nuclearmedical procedure in oncological diagnostics. A method for the automatic identification and quantitition of bone lesions in bone scintigrams is described. The idea is: without an individual identification of the more than 100 distinguishable bones of the skeleton the scintigram quantitatively will be compared with eg. a ''normal''s scintigram. Before that procedure all the bones will be transformed in size and location to fit the measures of a standard skeleton. Grey levels remain untouched. After the quantitition of regional pulse contents sets of bone masks are used for the identification of the corresponding bones. The normalisation of pulses in bones and the elimination of background in the scintigram are unavoidable prerequisites. The automatic quantitative evaluation of bone scintigrams leads to an improvement of reproducibility accuracy and data presentation for the health care of cancer patients. Percentual deviations to normal left to right side and changes in time are localised and quantified in primary diagnostics follow up and therapy control. I .© (1990) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.