CAT´s eye image: superimposed display of the coronary artery on bull´s eye image of SPECT

Deals with a method of generating a CAT´s Eye Image, in which the coronary arterial tree is superimposed on bull´s eye map of SPECT. One can grasp the myocardial function more easily in connection with the shape of the coronary artery. The CAT´s eye image is easily obtainable through some manual pointing on coronary angiograms (CAG) followed by an automatic matching method: First, a rough shape of the left ventricle (LV) is estimated by using SPECT data. This 3-D LV model is projected on a pair of bi-plane CAG images. By scanning the LV surface projected on CAG, one can obtain two temporal 2-D coronary images on a bull´s eye map. By maximizing a matching degree between two temporal images, registration between CAG and SPECT is performed. Finally the CAT´s eye image is obtained by integrating two temporal 2-D coronary images and bull´s eye image of SPECT. The authors´ method has been successfully applied to one artificial data set and several clinical cases