TRU-IMP: techniques for reliable use of images in medical physics; a graphical user interface to analyze and compare segmentations in nuclear medicine.

Abstract

Background. In the context of pharmacokinetic analyses, the segmentation method one uses has a large impact on the results obtained, thus the importance of transparency.Innovation. This paper introduces a graphical user interface (GUI), TRU-IMP, that analyzes time-activity curves and segmentations in dynamic nuclear medicine. This GUI fills a gap in the current technological tools available for the analysis of quantitative dynamic nuclear medicine image acquisitions. The GUI includes various techniques of segmentations, with possibilities to compute related uncertainties.Results. The GUI was tested on image acquisitions made on a dynamic nuclear medicine phantom. This allows the comparison of segmentations via their time-activity curves and the extracted pharmacokinetic parameters.Implications. The flexibility and user-friendliness allowed by the proposed interface make the analyses both easy to perform and adjustable to any specific case. This GUI permits researchers to better show and understand the reproducibility, precision, and accuracy of their work in quantitative dynamic nuclear medicine.Availability and Implementation. Source code freely available on GitHub:https://github.com/ArGilfea/TRU-IMPand location of the interface available from there. The GUI is fully compatible with iOS and Windows operating systems (not tested on Linux). A phantom acquisition is also available to test the GUI easily.