Automatic Alignment of Myocardial Perfusion Images with Contrast Cardiac Tomography

Explicit fusion of perfusion data from Positron Emission Tomography (PET) or Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) with coronary artery anatomy from Computed Tomographic Coronary Angiography (CTCA) has been shown to improve the diagnostic yield for coronary artery disease (CAD) compared to either modality alone. However, most clinically available methods were developed for multimodal scanners or require interactive alignment prior to display and analysis. A new approach was developed to register and display the two distributions obtained either from a single multimodal imager or from separate scanners, and a preliminary validation was undertaken using interactive alignment by experts.