Three-dimensional display of cardiac single photon emission computed tomography

Similar to other cardiac imaging modalities, the quest for a three-dimensional display that can be used for visualizing cardiac single photon emission, computed tomography studies has resulted in several techniques: surface shading, surface modeling, and volume rendering. Each of these techniques has its own advantages and disadvantages. Surface shading yields displays that can be used to enhance a patient's or referring clinician's understanding of a diagnosis, but they are rarely used for diagnostic purposes. Surface modeling yields images that can easily be used for diagnostic purposes, but at present have only been applied to cardiac imaging because of the difficulty of modeling other organs. Volume rendering, in some forms, is beginning to be used diagnostically for some hot-spot imaging procedures, but these are basically refined planar procedures and do not yet have application in quantitative tomography. Because of each technique's unique advantages, each will likely appear in some form in clinical cardiovascular nuclear medicine in the future.