Direct parametric reconstruction of gated dynamic cardiac spect

In our recent work, we demonstrated the feasibility of an image reconstruction procedure for unifying gated and dynamic imaging, which could yield valid kinetic information for discriminating between normal and perfusion defects. Motivated by this success, in this work we investigate a direct reconstruction approach to determine a sequence of gated, kinetic parameter images from a single acquisition, of which the goal is to provide information simultaneously for both tracer kinetics and wall motion. To combat the greatly under-determined nature of the problem, we apply a smoothness constraint to exploit the similarity among the different gates. The parameter images of the different gates are then determined jointly using maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation from all the available image data.