Fractal Analysis of Nuclear Medicine Images for the Diagnosis of Pulmonary Emphysema

Abstract

The analysis of this study suggested that the fractal dimension defined in a previous report was limited to the indication of the percentage area of low-radioactivity regions with respect to total tissue area in the image. Because the fractal dimension partially reflects, but is not specific to, a certain degree of focal spots of low radioactivity, we suggest using fractal analysis in clinical practice only with careful control and thorough understanding of the physical meanings.

Quantifying Optical Microangiography Images Obtained from a Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography System

“…Fractal analysis enables the assessment of the architecture of a vascular network, particularly the branching of vessels. It has been applied in diverse areas of medicine to describe complex biological structures [26] such as branching patterns of the retina [27], coronary [28], and pulmonary arterioles [29]. It has also been used to quantify the fractal distribution of scatterers in tissues [30], the parafoveal capillary network [31], and A-line from OCT images of arteries [32].…”

Composition Dependence of Inhomogeneous Hydrogen Bonding Structures in a-SiGe:H

“…Regardless, fractal analysis has found widespread application in many medical imaging modalities such as radiography, nuclear medicine, CT and MRI (e.g. Caligiuri et al (1994), Chen et al (1994), Floyd et al (1996), Vittitoe et al (1997), Kido and Sasaki (2003), Chung and Huang (2000), Tourassi et al (2000Tourassi et al ( , 2001, Kido et al (2002) and Takahashi et al (2004)). …”

Changes in the Heterogeneity of Cerebral Glucose Metabolism with Healthy Aging: Quantitative Assessment by Fractal Analysis

“…37 Nagao's intensity thresholding method has been criticized. 38 Critics claim that the count heterogeneity does not represent the heterogeneity itself and that this type of heterogeneity would disappear by adjustment of the displaying window settings. However, in the interpretation of pathologic images, nuclear medicine physicians prefer count heterogeneity, which is caused by the regionally abnormal uptake of radiopharmaceuticals, and no one would ignore this pattern by intentionally widening the range of the color scale.…”

“…We agree with the criticism that the fractal nature of Nagao's equation is fractal only in its shape. 38 Counts that are distributed over a 3-dimensional space are in a single dimension in Nagao's framework and only mimic the complex fractal nature.…”