Assessment of automated scintigram alignment in the stackgram domain for cardiac stress–rest SPECT studies

Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) provides a method to obtain three-dimensional images of blood perfusion. In cardiac stress–rest SPECT studies, coronary artery disease can be examined by comparing intensity differences of the acquired images of the heart at stress and rest. The stress–rest image pair needs to be aligned into the same spatial position and orientation in order to compare the images in an automated and reproducible manner. In this work, we study a novel stackgram-based alignment algorithm for cardiac stress–rest SPECT data. The stackgram approach allows the alignment of the acquired raw data prior to image reconstruction, unlike conventional alignment techniques.