Patent ID: 8498464

Claim:
A method for co-registering a nuclear medical (NM) reconstructed image obtained from an NM scan by an NM scanner having an NM gantry, and a computed tomography (CT) reconstructed image obtained from a CT scan by a CT scanner having a CT gantry in a multimodality imaging system, comprising: matching a first patient coordinate system of the NM scanner to a second patient coordinate system of the CT scanner, based on a predefined relationship between: a vertical position of a patient bed during the NM scan; an axial position of the patient bed during the NM scan; an axial distance between a gantry of the NM scanner and a gantry of the CT scanner; and a vertical distance between a center of orbit of the NM scanner and a center of rotation of the CT gantry; assigning an X-coordinate (X img ) to the CT reconstructed image by: specifying a row vector [rv x , rv y , rv z ] to reflect the orientation of the CT reconstructed image relative to the second patient coordinate system, and determining a distance (X center ) from a center of the second patient coordinate system and a transverse extents of the CT reconstructed image centered at an image center point (FOV).