A Computer System For Clinical Nuclear Cardiology

The advent of nuclear cardiology has resulted in computers playing an increasingly prominent role in nuclear medicine. Frequently, the requirements of nuclear cardiology - especially first pass and gated equilibrium studies - set the hardware and software requirements for the entire nuclear medicine computer system. As nuclear cardiology is a relatively new field (at least at the non-research level) many commercial computer systems with cardiac capabilities are being modified as feedback is obtained from the increasing number of users and studies. At the NIH we have performed over 1500 gated equilibrium nuclear cardiac studies, both at rest and during exercise, using software of our own design. During this time our computer system has evolved considerably. Although our current system is by no means an optimum one, the considerable experience we have had developing it has given us many insights into what we believe are the desirable features of a system for nuclear cardiology in a clinical setting. The purpose of this paper is to present what we believe to be the important features of such a system. We will begin by presenting the hardware and software features of our own (non-optimum) system. An examination of how these features meet (or fail to meet) the clinical need will hopefully point out the features (and their rationale) which should be present in a more optimum system. For the sake of brevity, we will concentrate primarily on gated equilibrium studies, although the system requirements of first transit and other techniques have also been considered in the system design.