Study Of Functional And Anatomic Brain Imaging Co-registration Methods

PurposeThe cerebral function and metabolism are described by SPECT imaging and the cerebral anatomic structure information is obtained by CT. The ability to localize anatomic structures quickly, accurately, and routinely in functional brain imaging is becoming increasing important by development of cerebral radiopharmaceutical. The abnormal prodromata of cerebral blood perfusion, metabolism and receptor function are detected by functional brain imaging to physiological and pathological variation of diseases before structural damnification and after comeback. Therefore, SPECT imaging is of great value in early diagnosis, learning results of therapy for diseases. However, SPECT brain imaging is afunctional image which cannot show clear anatomic structures due to lower special resolving power. Computed tomography has high special resolving power and can acquire detailed information of cerebral precise anatomic structure. Two different medical imaging patterns are superimposed in match special coordinate and location by computer as co-registration. Co-registration not only provides an useful help for clinical diagnosis, therapy and learning results of therapy, but also offers an great valuable method for detecting cerebral physiological and biochemical metabolism to develop basic medical study.There are several co-registration methods in overseas: computerized brain atlas methods, stereotactic methods, ROI atlas methods based on MRI and surface contour matching methods. The fiduciary reference system method was reported in 1994. The key of co-registration is data transform and match location of two different images. In recent years, many ameliorative methods were reported and some commercial software was provided by business, but many controversies were focused on methods of co-registration without mature and perfect means due to a lot of influencing factors. In this manuscript we designed a method of brain imaging co-registration which was based on fiduciary reference system methods. In existent equipments, the co-registration between SPECT functional brain imaging and CT anatomic brain imaging was completedin such a way that we planed a computer processing system and matched images with noninvasive exterior locating sign and interior character.Methods1 MaterialThe equipment for functional imaging was GE Camstar 3200 SPECT and the equipment for anatomic imaging was GE Hi speed CT/I. The radiopharmaceutical to perform imaging was 99mTc-ECD for cerebral blood perfusion and 99mTc-TRODAT-1 for cerebral dopamine transporters (DAT). The contrast agent on CT is Ominipaque.2 Reference system devicesWe designed two references system hardware including glasses-like and head head-cover-like framework to produces a linear array converging dots which were visible on corresponding scan planes in SPECT and CT imaging. For visualization on SPECT, the tubing was injected with radioactive tracer. For use in CT the system was injected with contrast agent (the metallic needle have no use for injecting contrast agent on CT).3 Image data acquisition and format transformAll patients were underwent SPECT imaging with low energy, high resolution and parallel hole collimator. 64 projection are obtained using 128x128 matrix and rotating 360?for 25 sec per view. The computer deal with images in three-dimensions. Brain tomography was performed bySPECT and CT that they all were based on OM line as base. GE Camstar 3200 SPECT image was transformed to DICOM format with appropriative acquisition card. GE Hispeed CT/I image was transformed directly to uniform DICOM format. 4 Exploitation for medical images co-registration systemThe medical images co-registration system was exploited cooperating with computer engineer to complete co-registration between SPECT functional brain imaging and CT anatomic brain imaging . The computer processing system of co-registration included three big functional model blocks which were processing image, location match and showing co-registratio...