Visualization of cardiovascular nuclear medicine tomographic perfusion studies

Several methodologies and tools for enhancing the clinician´s ability to visualize and characterize perfusion defects are presented. The tools include an improved method for sampling the myocardium which reduces the partial volume effects often encountered when sampling the apex, volume-weighted and distance-weighted polar maps that enhance the information extracted from the new sampling technique, a method for visualizing perfusion information in three dimensions which decreases the distortions inherent in 2-D polar maps and also allows for unifying the perfusion information with the anatomic information obtained from 3-D coronary trees, and a method for visualizing 3-D gated perfusion information that allows a clinician to assess both perfusion and wall thickening