FOUNDATIONS OF FACTOR-ANALYSIS OF MEDICAL IMAGE SEQUENCES - A UNIFIEDAPPROACH AND SOME PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Factor Analysis of Medical Image Sequences (FAMIS) is presently conduc ted either in the function space or in the image space. A unified appr oach jointly using these two spaces is presented. First, the solution of a statistical model for scintigraphic image sequences leads to the use of correspondence analysis which is the optimal orthogonal decompo sition of this data. Then, two symmetrical hypotheses concerning eithe r the underlying fundamental functions or the underlying fundamental s patial distributions are derived. These hypotheses are merged in an or iginal method to solve FAMIS physical model. Using this unified approa ch, a priori knowledge about functions and images can be jointly taken into account to improve the estimation of the underlying structures. Some practical applications of the method are illustrated on simulated data.