Design of an automated algorithm for labeling the cardiac blood pool in gated SPECT images of radiolabeled red blood cells

The design of an automated computer algorithm for labeling the cardiac blood pool within gated 3-D reconstructions of the radiolabeled red blood cells is investigated. Due to patient functional abnormalities, limited resolution, and noise, certain spatial and temporal features of the cardiac blood pool that one would anticipate finding in every study are not present in certain frames or with certain patients. The labeling of the cardiac blood pool requires an algorithm that only relies upon features present in all patients. The authors investigate the design of a fully-automated region growing algorithm for this purpose.