MEDITOMO: a high performance software package for 3D SPECT imaging

We describe a parallel software library, named MEDITOMO, designed for processing MEDIcal images obtained by SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) TOMOgraphic systems. MEDITOMO is the core library of the PSE (problem solving environment) MEDIGRID, oriented to medical imaging analysis, which the authors are currently developing. MEDIGRID is employed in a Grid-computing infrastructure involving clinical departments and research institutes. The algorithms of MEDITOMO are the standard ones that are usually applied in the SPECT analysis, i.e. the conjugate gradient and the expectation maximization. The main contribution of this work concerns the introduction of the total variation seminorm as the edge-preserving regularization in both algorithms and the development of the parallel software library. Experiments carried out on synthetic and clinical data are shown