Improved nuclear medicine uniformity assessment with noise texture analysis

Because γ cameras are generally susceptible to environmental conditions and system vulnerabilities, they require routine evaluation of uniformity performance. The metrics for such evaluations are commonly pixel value-based. Although these metrics are typically successful at identifying regional nonuniformities, they often do not adequately reflect subtle periodic structures; therefore, additional visual inspections are required. The goal of this project was to develop, test, and validate a new uniformity analysis metric capable of accurately identifying structures and patterns present in nuclear medicine flood-field uniformity images