Physiological enhancement of factors in factor analysis of dynamic studies

Factor analysis of dynamic radionuclide studies provides their decomposition into the images and time-activity curves corresponding to the underlying dynamic structures. The method is based on the analysis of study variance and on the subsequent differential imaging of its principal components into a simplified factor space. By changing the amount and the composition of the variance processed in the analysis it is possible to enhance the factors that are important for diagnosis while the less important factors can be suppressed. In our report, a short theoretical review of the problem is given and illustrated by the analysis of dynamic cholescintigraphy. It is shown that a suitable choice of region and/or the temporal interval of interest enables the differential evaluation of such intrahepatic compartments, which could not be observed without enhancement. (orig.)