Use of a nonstationary temporal Wiener filter in nuclear medicine.

The use of the Wiener filter is proposed for temporal filtering of nuclear medicine dynamic studies. This filter adapts to the signal and noise levels of each pixel activity curve in a dynamic study to produce an "optimal" suppression of noise, while maintaining the signal content of the curve. The filter is derived to be a simple function of the power spectrum of the time-activity curve. Examples of its use for temporally filtering gated blood-pool studies for cine viewing and functional image formation are shown.