Quantitative assessment of small animal cardiac 18F-FDG PET and MRI image

Cardiac disease research relies increasingly on small animal models and non-invasive imaging methods such as positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Delayed enhancement magnetic resonance imaging (DE-MRI) using gadolinium-based contrast agents appear to be a visualizing infracted myocardium with high spatial resolution. Polar map (or bull's-eye image) was used to determination of the myocardial infarction area. Polar map is a comprehensive interpretation of the left ventricle. The infarct size was computed as the fraction of the total polar map areas. The threshold was computed as the percentage of mean intensity of the normal region. In other study, 50% predefined threshold value in varying range (30∼70%) was most commonly use. However, predefined threshold value isn't acceptance in all case. The purpose of this study was to investigate methodological approach for automatic measurement of rat myocardial infarct size using PET and MRI polar map with adaptive threshold value driven from Multi gaussian mixture model (MGMM)