Time--domain analysis in gated cardiac blood pool studies

A technique is presented for producing functional images derived from equilibrium gated blood pool studies as a means of diagnosing cardiac disease. These functional images are based on characteristics associated with the time variation of the count rate (the time domain) at each point of the image matrix rather than on the Fourier transform of the time-activity curve (the frequency domain) which has gained recent attention. As examples of this method, we present images which display the statistical variance of the time-activity curve at each pixel, corrected for the expected contribution due to random statistical fluctuation, and images which display the time at which each pixel reaches its minimum count value. Variance and time-to-minimum images are comparable to Fourier amplitude and phase images, respectively, and have been found to be useful in facilitating the diagnosis of wall motion abnormalities. A major advantage of time-domain analysis is the wide variety of features of potential clinical significance which may be investigated.