PET CT Image Navigation and Communication.pdf

PET/CT Image Navigation and Communication Osman Ratib, MD, PhD Department of Radiology and Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, Ahmanson Biological Imaging Center, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California age data remain inadequate for proper visualization of the true The advent of multimodality imaging scanners combining PET content of images. and CT has led to a new paradigm in image display and pre- Key Words: PET/CT; multimodality imaging; image fusion; sentation that raises new challenges in workstation interpreta- functional images tion software, image navigation, and communication. The es- J Nucl Med 2004; 45:46S–55S sence of multimodality imaging is the ability to overlay imaging information from different modalities in a visually compelling fashion. This is accomplished by combining functional and an- atomic data into multidimensional views using color-encoding Visualization and interactive review of volumetric data techniques that provide visual clues on the spatial distribution of image data. Discussion: Combined PET/CT scanners provide from tomographic imaging techniques represents a chal- spatially registered images from the two modalities acquired lenge for software developers to provide adequate tools for simultaneously in a single imaging session. Special reconstruc- conveniently navigating through large datasets representing tion software and image display programs are required to 3-dimensional anatomic volumes. Diagnostic interpretation rescale the native images from different spatial resolution into of CT traditionally was performed from 2-dimensional sec-