Sotirios Athanasios Tsaftaris1, Richard Tang2, Rachel Klein2, Debiao Li2,3, Rohan Dharmakumar2
1Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA; 2Radiology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA; 3Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
A method for automatic visualization and quantification of myocardial signal changes reflecting the regional variations in microcirculatory oxygenation is presented. The objective of this study is to overcome the subjective step of windowing by establishing an optimal colormap that permits visualization of statistical changes in signal intensities between healthy and pathological cases. In addition, graph theory is used to derive a quantitative metric of myocardial oxygenation. Although further studies are necessary, this initial work provides a new direction in the evaluation of BOLD images for detection of myocardial oxygenation impairments resulting from coronary artery stenosis.