Abstract
A method is presented for the automated determination of the right ventricular ejection fraction (RVEF) by digital image processing of scintigrams obtained by intravenous infusion of Krypton 81m (81mKr) dissolved in a glucose solution. End-diastolic and end-systolic sum pictures were computed by the addition of approximately 30–40 frames selected from the time-activity curve of a preliminary, manually drawn, right ventricular region of interest. After processing these two images with an adaptive Wiener filter, the right ventricular contour was determined by a recently developed algorithm using morphological and functional criteria. The RVEF was calculated for a series of 51 patients from the counts in the detected right ventricular regions in the end-diastolic and end-systolic sum images. In 16 patients without evidence of cardiopulmonary disease, the mean RVEF was 50±6.1%. RVEF was significantly reduced in 18 patients with obstructive pulmonary disease (42±6.5%) and in 17 patients with congestive cardiomyopathy (36±7.1%). The correlation coefficient between two determinations of the RVEF was r=0.94. Through digital image processing, the determination of the RVEF by radioimage processing, the determination of the RVEF by radioventriculography with 81mKr showed high reliability and reproducibility.
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Elfner, R., Vaknine, R., Knapp, W.H. et al. Automated determination of the right ventricular ejection fraction by digital processing of 81mKr scintigrams. Eur J Nucl Med 12, 231–235 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00251975
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00251975