Authors: Guido Germano Paul B Kavanagh Mathews B Fish Mark H Lemley Yuan Xu Daniel S Berman Piotr J Slomka
Publish Date: 2016/10/14
Volume: 23, Issue: 6, Pages: 1435-1441
Abstract
This paper describes a novel approach samepatient processing or SPP aimed at improving left ventricular segmentation accuracy in patients with multiple SPECT studies and evaluates its performance compared to conventional processing in a large population of 962 patients undergoing rest and stress electrocardiographygated SPECT MPI for a total of 5772 image datasets 6 per patientEach dataset was independently processed using a standard algorithm and a shape quality control score SQC was produced for every segmentation Datasets with a SQC score higher than a specific threshold suggesting algorithmic failure were automatically reprocessed with the SPPmodified algorithm which incorporates knowledge of the segmentation mask location in the other datasets belonging to the same patient Experienced operators blinded as to whether datasets had been processed based on the standard or SPP approach assessed segmentation success/failure for each datasetThe SPP approach reduced segmentation failures from 219/5772 38 to 42/5772 07 overall with particular improvements in attenuation corrected AC datasets with high extracardiac activity from 100/962 104 to 12/962 14 for rest AC and from 41/962 43 to 9/962 09 for stress AC The number of patients who had at least one of their 6 datasets affected by segmentation failure decreased from 141/962 147 to 14/962 17 using the SPP approachWhenever multiple image datasets for the same patient exist and need to be processed it is possible to deal with the images as a group rather than individually The samepatient processing approach can be implemented automatically and may substantially reduce the need for manual reprocessing due to cardiac segmentation failure
Keywords: