A computer algorithm to standardize medical images acquired using positron emission tomography.
Problem: Positron emission tomography (PET) is a commonly utilized imaging modality used for body-wide assessments of a variety of diseases, including cancer. Measurements derived from PET images are used to make diagnostic, staging, and treatment decisions for improved patient care. The standardized uptake value (SUV) is a quantitative measurement widely utilized for a semi-quantitative PET assessment in clinical practice. Patient-related factors including body weight and habitus, and technical factors including image acquisition methods and image reconstruction methods may adversely affect the accuracy of PET-derived measurements. Attempting to account for all adverse factors remains a challenge to the goal of accurate and reproducible measurements from PET images.
Solution: A computer algorithm to standardize PET images and reduce errors in PET quantification. This algorithm does not use patient-related or scanner-related factors which allows it to be applied across scanners and image acquisition protocols and even for already existing data sets.
Technology Overview: The standardization operation is applicable to both PET and SUV images. A calibration step is first applied to a series of training images from which key parameters characterizing a standardization mapping are determined. This operation is performed only once. Subsequently, for any given image to be standardized, a standardization transformation is applied by estimating the corresponding parametric values for the given image and utilizing the learned parametric values. PET and SUV images are standardized separately.
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Docket # 20-9225