A Technology of Renogram Dividing Based on Blood Vessels to Obtain a More Accurate Diagnosis

Abstract

Nuclear medicine could provide an accurate estimate of the biochemical composition, metabolism, and capability of the kidney. Using nuclear medicine imaging to scan the organ, we can find the time-activity curve, called a renogram, by the intensity of the image. The activity curve can be employed to describe organ capability. Traditional methods of observing the activity curve of the whole kidney can obscure some small details. This paper proposes an improved renogram based on blood vessel distribution to estimate the kidney capability automatically. Every patient must acquire 180 renal dynamic images from the renal scan. First, acquiring region of the kidney in the No. 68 kidney image and correcting the background of this sample image, the sample image will be applied to the rest of the images to find the region of the kidney. The kidney image is then divided into several sub-regions according to the paths of the blood vessels from No. 50 kidney image. For each sub-region, we find the time–intensity curve, called the sub-renogram. Then, we observe the activity curves of the sub-region and the whole kidney separately to assist the diagnosis. The results of the automatic analysis are similar to the traditional methods used on the whole kidney, which ignores any abnormal sub-region activity. The proposed method can improve the accuracy of the doctor’s diagnosis.