Retrospective Gating for Medical Imaging Data
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional nuclear imaging techniques face challenges in producing clear images due to cyclical body movements caused by physiological processes, as these movements are not perfectly uniform, leading to difficulties in accurately identifying phases and reconstructing phase-specific images.
Innovation Solution
The proposed solution involves retrospective gating of imaging data, where cycles deviating from a typical duration are identified, and the associated data is ignored, with the remaining cycles divided into bins to reconstruct images corresponding to each phase of the physiological cycle.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If phase-specific images are reconstructed from image data acquired during cyclical body movement, then motion artifacts are reduced, but image quality deteriorates when cycles deviate from typical duration
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments physiological cycles into individual cycles and further segments each cycle into phase-specific time periods (bins). By dividing the continuous acquisition period into discrete cycles and phases, the system can selectively process only those cycles that meet duration criteria, thereby reducing motion artifacts while maintaining phase identification accuracy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary identification and filtering of physiological cycles based on duration criteria before phase-specific image reconstruction. By pre-screening cycles to exclude those with atypical durations, the system ensures that only high-quality cycles are used for reconstruction, preventing degradation of phase identification accuracy.
2Productivity
If all acquired image data is used for reconstruction, then data utilization is maximized, but image quality deteriorates due to inclusion of data from atypical cycles
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and excludes image data acquired during physiological cycles with atypical durations from the reconstruction process. By separating out data from atypical cycles, the system maintains high data utilization from normal cycles while preventing degradation of image quality from including atypical data.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of cycle selection by introducing duration-based filtering criteria. By adjusting which cycles are included in reconstruction based on their duration parameters, the system optimizes the balance between data utilization and image quality, using only cycles that meet predefined duration thresholds.
3Productivity
If phase identification is performed without cycle duration verification, then processing speed is maintained, but measurement precision deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary verification of cycle duration before proceeding to phase identification and image reconstruction. This pre-check ensures that only cycles with typical durations are processed, maintaining measurement precision without significantly impacting processing speed since the duration check is a simple comparison operation.
Data Source
AI summary
A system to generate images based on imaging data of a portion of a body and physiological event data associated with a physiological process of the body. The system is to identify a plurality of physiological cycles based on the physiological event data, determine a duration of each of the plurality of physiological cycles, determine a representative duration based on the durations of each of the plurality of physiological cycles, identify a first plurality of the plurality of physiological cycles based on a difference between the durations of the first plurality of physiological cycles and the representative duration, identify a second plurality of the plurality of physiological cycles different from the first plurality of the plurality of physiological cycles, determine a predetermined number of portions of each of the second plurality of the plurality of physiological cycles, accumulate imaging data acquired during respective portions of each of the second plurality of the plurality of physiological cycles to determine a set of accumulated imaging data for each of the predetermined number of portions, and generate a plurality of images, each of the plurality of images being generated based on a respective one of the sets of accumulated imaging data.