Abstract

In this study, a software has been developed to detect the regions that could be responsible for areas in the nervous system of the disorders of cases with Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS). This software produces three distinct results, processing the brain perfusion SPECT image during a time when the patient has no disorders and the brain perfusion image at the time of patient’s disorder, with image-processing algorithms. In this study, the initial image recordings of patients were made with a gamma camera, one at daytime during when the RLS patients had no disorder and at nighttime when the disorder appeared. Then, those recorded images in the format of DICOM were converted into the jpg format. In total, 59 daytime and 59 nighttime images taken from different sections of the patients’ brain were determined by using image processing algorithms. The images were subtracted from one another to obtain the first resulting image belonging to the co-images of the same section of the brains of RLS patients.  In order to obtain the second resulting image, Gaussian filter was applied on the co-images and then the images were subtracted. Lastly, after the subtraction of images by histogram matching on the co-images, the final resulting image was obtained. The different regions in the resulting images were marked as coloring blue to be able to assist in easy recognition of which, brain lobes and sections were active during the RLS disorder.

Key words: Image processing, restless legs syndrome, brain perfusion SPECT.