Image Analysis

UT-SAIR provides and supports a variety of different image processing tools that enable our users to analyze their images. These tools include modality-specific tools like fitting dynamic contrast-enhanced MR studies in terms of the relevant pharmacokinetic parameters, and analyzing diffusion weighted MRI (DWI) to determine the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) of water in tissue.

Image analysis is further supported by Inborn Research Workplace (IRW), a multimodality image review, fusion, and analysis package that enables efficient research, producing repeatable and reliable analysis results. Supporting CT, PET, SPECT, and MR data in DICOM, and Siemens’ Inveon CT, PET, and SPECT formats, as well as raw data import, the data browser makes it easy to import and manage imaging data.

Some features of the IRW include:

  • General analysis and quantification
  • 3D visualization and analysis

Our two bioluminescence systems run the latest Living Image 4.1 software, and we maintain 14 licenses: several are available centrally on computers dedicated to data processing, while others have been provided to the laboratories of major users to allow offline analysis in their own laboratories.

We also have more general image processing software packages for processing images from all of the different modalities. These include OSIRIX, a Macintosh-based DICOM viewer and analysis program that supports the implementation of user-developed “plug-ins” written in Matlab, C++, and Python. We have licenses for VivoQuant™, a post-processing suite for image data combining fundamental viewing functionality with analysis capabilities. This package supports data from most imaging modalities including MR, PET, SPECT, CT, and Optical. VivoQuant also supports the implementation of user developed “scripts” written in Matlab, C++, and Python.

We also use ImageJ, a free, open source image analysis package available from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that offers a large variety of user developed “plug-ins” for many different image analysis algorithms.

Five workstations are available for image analysis – two on the South Campus, and three on the North Campus. These can be accessed either directly or by remote login from anywhere on campus.