Non-invasive imaging for determination of global tissue characteristics

摘要

Evaluating tissue characteristics including identification of injured tissue or alteration of the ratios of native tissue components such as shifting the amounts of normal myocytes and fibrotic tissue in the heart, identifying increases in the amount of extracellular components or fluid (like edema or extracellular matrix proteins), or detecting infiltration of tumor cells or mediators of inflammation into the tissue of interest in a patient, such as a human being, is provided by obtaining a first image of tissue including a region of interest from a first acquisition, and obtaining a second image of the tissue including the region of interest during a second, subsequent acquisition. The subsequent acquisition may be obtained after a period of time to determine if injury has occurred during that period of time. Such a comparison may include comparison of mean, average characteristics, histogram shape, such as skew and kurtosis, or distribution of intensities within the histogram.

主权项

1. A method of evaluating tissue characteristics in a patient, comprising:
electronically applying a statistical autocorrelation analysis to image data to determine a pattern of at least one pixel parameter within a three dimensional tissue volume of a region of interest to evaluate whether the pattern is (i) clustered or (ii) distributed or diffuse; and determining a potential of a global injury, global abnormal tissue, or global abnormal accumulation of materials not found in normal ratios within native tissue based on the determined pattern, wherein the global injury, global abnormal tissue, and/or global abnormal accumulation is due to a change in tissue composition and/or function that is in a diffuse and/or distributed pattern in the region of interest, wherein the electronically applying is carried out using at least one processor.