Medical Images are difficult to analyze by means of classical image processing tools because they are very complex and irregular. Such shapes are obtained for instance in Nuclear Medecine with the spatial distribution of activity for organs such as lungs, liver, and heart. We have tried to apply two different theories to these signals: - Fractal Geometry deals with the analysis of complex irregular shapes which cannot well be described by the classical Euclidean geometry. - Integral Geometry treats sets globally and allows to introduce robust measures. We have computed three parameters on three kinds of Lung's SPECT images: normal, pulmonary embolism and chronic desease: - The commonly used fractal dimension (FD), that gives a measurement of the irregularity of the 3D shape. - The generalized lacunarity dimension (GLD), defined as the variance of the ratio of the local activity by the mean activity, which is only sensitive to the distribution and the size of gaps in the surface. - The Favard length that gives an approximation of the surface of a 3-D shape. The results show that each slice of the lung, considered as a 3D surface, is fractal and that the fractal dimension is the same for each slice and for the three kind of lungs; as for the lacunarity and Favard length, they are clearly different for normal lungs, pulmonary embolisms and chronic diseases. These results indicate that automatic classification of Lung's SPECT can be achieved, and that a quantitative measurement of the evolution of the disease could be made.

Date Published: 1 November 1989
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 1199, Visual Communications and Image Processing IV, (1 November 1989); doi: 10.1117/12.970100

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1199:
Visual Communications and Image Processing IV
William A. Pearlman, Editor(s)