title: A Computer-Aided Analysis Method of SPECT Brain Images for Quantitative Treatment Monitoring: Performance Evaluations and Clinical Applications.
abstract: The objective and quantitative analysis of longitudinal single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images are significant for the treatment monitoring of brain disorders. Therefore, a computer aided analysis (CAA) method is introduced to extract a change-rate map (CRM) as a parametric image for quantifying the changes of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in longitudinal SPECT brain images. The performances of the CAA-CRM approach in treatment monitoring are evaluated by the computer simulations and clinical applications. The results of computer simulations show that the derived CRMs have high similarities with their ground truths when the lesion size is larger than system spatial resolution and the change rate is higher than 20%. In clinical applications, the CAA-CRM approach is used to assess the treatment of 50 patients with brain ischemia. The results demonstrate that CAA-CRM approach has a 93.4% accuracy of recovered region's localization. Moreover, the quantitative indexes of recovered regions derived from CRM are all significantly different among the groups and highly correlated with the experienced clinical diagnosis. In conclusion, the proposed CAA-CRM approach provides a convenient solution to generate a parametric image and derive the quantitative indexes from the longitudinal SPECT brain images for treatment monitoring.
authors.affiliation: Department of Automation, The School of Electrical Engineering Information, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China; Department of Nuclear Medicine, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Xiujuan
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-4703-9530
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: Department of Automation, The School of Electrical Engineering Information, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Wentao
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Med-X Institute, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Qiu
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Department of Nuclear Medicine, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Shaoli
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-2544-7522
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Jieqing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.affiliation: Department of Nuclear Medicine, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Huang
mesh_terms: D000716:Anatomy, Artistic; D001271:Atlases as Topic; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D016903:Drug Monitoring; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon / Q000379:methods*