TEXTURE ANALYSIS OF DIVERS BRAINS USING TC-99(M)-HMPAO SPET

The potential use of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) single photon emission tomography (SPET) imaging with Tc-99(m)-hexamethylpropylenea mine oxime (HMPAO) in the management of divers who have undergone a fo rm of decompression sickness (DCS) was investigated using texture anal ysis. We imaged 50 divers, 10 of whom had only experienced DCS which h ad been categorized as Type 1, 20 of whom had a history of DCS classif ied as Type 2 and 20 of whom had not suffered an episode of DCS. A num ber of divers who had experienced Type 2 DCS had also had incidents of Type 1. The reconstructed SPET images were pre-processed and analysed using a first-order texture analysis technique based on a grey level histogram. The results showed that there was a significant textural di fference between the divers who had only suffered episodes of DCS Type I and the diving controls and a difference between the divers with a history of Type 2 and the diving controls. No differences were found b etween the two groups of divers who had a history of DCS. This result suggests that DCS produces a detectable change in Tc-99(m)-HMPAO SPET brain images. However, the segmentation between the groups investigate d was not complete and so the usefulness of this approach appears limi ted in individual cases but may provide useful information about the e ffects of different diving practices.