Methods and apparatus for assessing activity of an organ and uses thereof

摘要

Methods and apparatus are provided for imaging activity of an organ of a subject for diagnosis and prognosis of pathology or injury to the organ, where unaffected portions of the organ are used as a reference for assessing activity of afflicted areas of the organ.

主权项

1. A system for assessing the activity of an organ in a test animal subject without comparison to a control animal subject, the system comprising one or more processors, a memory unit, and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium including computer-readable code that is read by the one or more processors to perform a method comprising the steps of:
a) accessing by one or more computers a quantitative three-dimensional image of the organ of the test animal subject that is represented as voxels, wherein each voxel contains information about the activity of a portion of the same organ; b) constructing by the one or more computers a histogram of values represented by all voxels, fitting a curve to the histogram, and selecting voxels for inclusion for determining a reference level of activity of the organ if their values fall within a portion of the histogram that is symmetrical about a mean of values represented by all voxels; c) calculating by the one or more computers a mean of the activity represented by the voxels selected for inclusion in step b) and a standard deviation (SD) of the mean, wherein the mean of the activity represented by the voxels selected for inclusion represents a reference level of activity of the organ of the test subject; d) rescaling the histogram based on the mean calculated in step c) of the activity represented by the voxels selected for inclusion and fitting a curve to the rescaled histogram of the voxels selected for inclusion in step b); e) identifying areas of the organ of the test subject having increased activity above the reference level of activity of the organ of the test subject as represented by voxels having activity above a certain standard deviation of the mean calculated in step c), and/or identifying areas of the organ of the test subject having reduced activity below the reference level of activity of the organ of the test subject as represented by voxels having activity below a certain standard deviation of the mean calculated in step c); and f) outputting by the one or more computers to an output device a representation of the organ of the test subject showing areas of the organ having increased activity above the reference level of activity of the organ of the test subject and/or reduced activity below the reference level of activity of the organ of the test subject, thereby assessing the activity of an organ in the test animal subject without comparison to a control animal subject.