Patent Document ID: 7844096
Application ID: 11656205
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method performed by a processor for spatially localized noise-adaptive smoothing of nuclear medicine tomographic images, comprising: obtaining a mean value R α ij for each pixel (i,j) of a reconstructed image by reconstructing a corresponding nuclear medicine data using a shift-invariant smoothing kernel of width α; obtaining a variance V α ij of each R α ij ; forming a signal-to-noise ratio image SNR α ij from a ratio SNR α ij = R α ij / V α ij ; (a) reconstructing all R α ij and V α ij for two or more different values of α within an interval α min ≦α≦α max ; (b) forming an SNR image, SNR α ij , for each R α ij and V α ij ; (c) selecting a target value for the SNR of the output image; and (d) determining a value of R α ij corresponding to the target value of SNR by interpolating between the R α ij values whose corresponding SNR α ij values bracket the target SNR using a model of the variation of R α ij with SNR α ij , wherein if the target value of SNR is not bracketed by computed SNR α ij values, the R α ij value corresponding to the target SNR is the one whose corresponding value of SNR α ij is closest to the target SNR value.