Quantitative parameters for the assessment of renal scintigraphic images

Renal scintigraphy is a well-established functional technique for the visual evaluation of the renal cortical mass. It allows the visualization of the radiopharmaceutical tracer distribution, the size, shape, symmetry, and position of the kidneys. However, the (visual) analysis of these images tend to be subjective, causing significant variability in the interpretation of findings. This paper proposes objective measures that reflect common findings observed in those images, and potentially can minimize the inter-observer variability. We also propose a segmentation method specific for renal scintigraphic images. Our preliminary experiments indicate that our proposed features agree in at least 90% of the cases with the specialists visual evaluation.