Patent ID: 8615117

Claim:
A method for estimating the concentration of a tracer in a tissue structure assembly including at least one tissue structure, from a measurement image of the tracer concentration in said tissue structure assembly, which is obtained by an imaging apparatus, the image comprising at least one space domain (D i ) inside which the tracer concentration is homogenous and at least one region of interest (R i ) inside which the tracer concentration is measured, the method comprising: determining a geometric transfer matrix (W) having coefficients (w i,j ) representative of the contribution of the space domains (D i ) in the measurement of the tracer concentration in the regions of interest (R j ); optimizing the coefficients (w i,j ) of the geometric transfer matrix (W) by defining the best regions of interest (R j ) in terms of errors in order to measure the tracer concentration, the definition of the regions of interest (R j ) being carried out according to an iterative loop that includes the following steps upon each iteration (k): modifying the regions of interest (R j ); and calculating the coefficients (w i,j ) of the geometric transfer matrix (W) from the modified regions of interest (R j ); selecting an optimized geometric transfer matrix (W) among the calculated geometric transfer matrices (W); and estimating the tracer concentration from the optimized geometric transfer matrix (W).