QAV-PET: Quantitative Analysis and Visualization of PET images.

Open source software advances research and allows for more application specific tuning in a very feasible and efficient manner. Chief among the open source platforms is the MATLAB programming environment which is very commonly used in research settings especially in the field of medical imaging. Although many scientists use MATLAB for analysis, there remains a significant lack of open source software platforms which allow for both the analysis and visualization of pathological regions within fused multi-modal medical images. There is a clear need for a MATLAB based software which allows for anatomical (i.e. CT or MRI) and functional (i.e. PET) joint visualization and quantification in an intuitive and efficient way. In particular, this software should focus on PET imaging which is being more widely used for small animal studies. We present here the structure, features, and potential applications of an open source software for the Quantitative Analysis and Visualization of PET Images (QAV-PET).