The Use of Computers for Image Processing in Nuclear Medicine

A survey of various image processing techniques as applied to images in nuclear medicine is presented. These may be classified as procedures to improve detectability, to correct for distortion, to compress, to quantitate and to aid automation. On evaluation, although rather disappointing results from conventional image 'enhancing' techniques have been found, the use of various image 'transforming' procedures seems highly satisfactory and, in particular using array processors, of increasing importance in this field.