Dg. Sutton et V. Kempi, CONSTRAINED LEAST-SQUARES RESTORATION AND RENOGRAM DECONVOLUTION - A COMPARISON WITH OTHER TECHNIQUES, Physics in medicine and biology, 38(8), 1993, pp. 1043-1050
It has previously been shown that an iterative constrained least-squar
es (CLSR) technique using a noise-based constraint may be superior to
other methods of renogram deconvolution analysis. To test this hypothe
sis on real data, renography was performed on 70 patients with establi
shed diagnoses of normal, insufficient or acutely obstructed kidneys.
Standard renography parameters were obtained from the time activity cu
rves which were then deconvolved using three techniques. One kidney pe
r patient was chosen at random for analysis resulting in a total of 43
normal and 27 diseased kidneys. The ability of each of the analytical
techniques to discriminate between normal and diseased kidneys was as
sessed using logistic regression. CLSR proved to be robust and provide
the best discrimination of the deconvolution techniques. However, the
best overall discrimination was provided by a model based on the reno
graphy parameters excretion ratio, rate of uptake and time to peak act
ivity which correctly classified 86% of the kidneys. It is possible th
at the renogram parameters could be used to produce notional probabili
ties of renal dysfunction which the physician could use as an aid in t
he interpretation of gamma-camera renography.