Department of Immunology and Inflammation, Humanitas Clinical and Research Hospital, Via Manzoni 56 - Rozzano, 20089, Milan, Italy.
Humanitas University, Via Rita Levi Montalcini, Pieve Emanuele, 20090, Milan, Italy.
Mol Imaging Biol. 2019 Jun;21(3):401-409. doi: 10.1007/s11307-018-1236-5.
Irregularity in shape and behavior is the main feature of every anatomical system, including human organs, tissues, cells, and sub-cellular entities. It has been shown that this property cannot be quantified by means of the classical Euclidean geometry, which is only able to describe regular geometrical objects. In contrast, fractal geometry has been widely applied in several scientific fields. This rapid growth has also produced substantial insights in the biomedical imaging. Consequently, particular attention has been given to the identification of pathognomonic patterns of "shape" in anatomical entities and their changes from natural to pathological states. Despite the advantages of fractal mathematics and several studies demonstrating its applicability to oncological research, many researchers and clinicians remain unaware of its potential. Therefore, this review aims to summarize the complexity and fractal geometry of nuclear medicine images.
形态和行为的不规则性是包括人体器官、组织、细胞和亚细胞实体在内的每个解剖系统的主要特征。已经表明，这种特性不能通过经典的欧几里得几何来量化，因为它只能描述规则的几何对象。相比之下，分形几何已被广泛应用于多个科学领域。这种快速发展也为生物医学成像带来了实质性的见解。因此，人们特别关注识别解剖实体的“形态”特征以及它们从自然状态到病理状态的变化的特征模式。尽管分形数学具有优势，并且有多项研究表明其在肿瘤学研究中的适用性，但许多研究人员和临床医生仍然不知道其潜力。因此，本综述旨在总结核医学图像的复杂性和分形几何。
