A comparison of human observers and a channelized Hotelling observer in discriminating between Alzheimer´s dementia and controls using brain perfusion SPECT

The goal of the present study is to compare human and channelized Hotellling (CH) observers in an ROC study to detect the perfusion that is characteristic of mild Alzheimer´s disease within SPECT images. The studies involved three types of images: SPECT images, 3DSSP images, and the Z-score of 3DSSP images. Results show that the performance of the CH observer was similar to that of the human observers, depending on the image type. This indicates that a CH observer may be a useful technique for evaluating image processing methods in brain perfusion SPECT