Automatic method for quantitative automatic evaluation in dynamic renal scintilography images

摘要

Renal insufficiency is one of the most frequent health problems in Brazil and in the world. In some cases, the renal insufficiency symptoms are not easily perceived, and the disease may evolute to a more serious stage. Nuclear medicine is a specialty for human body image acquisition based on the use of radioisotopes for the analysis of some organ functionalities. Renal scintigraphy is an image based examination used for the diagnosing of problems in renal functions. This work presents an automatic method for quantitative analysis based on renal scintigraphy. The proposed methodology is capable of segmenting regions in the image associated with kidney, background, and aorta. Based on parameters obtained from these segmented images, it is possible to compute the glomerular filtration rate, renogram and renal transit time by deconvolution. The result obtained by the methodology were compared with results of a manual analysis made by a specialist, reaching promising results to be used in a clinical use.