Determining pancreas disease using functional imaging

A diagnostic method of determining a health condition of an organ of a patient, comprising:

• administering a radioisotope dose to the patient, such that the organ uptakes the radioisotope;
• acquiring imaging data via nuclear medicine imaging from the patient when the radioisotope dose is active in the patient;
• deriving a radioisotope count uptaken by the organ and a radioisotope uptaken by one or more other organs from the acquired image data;
• determining a radioisotope count perfused into the organ based on the derived radioisotope count uptaken by the organ and the derived radioisotope uptaken by the one or more other organs;
• determining a functional organ volume index;
• determining an individual organ function index by computing a quotient of the derived radioisotope count uptaken by the organ over the derived radioisotope count perfused into the organ;
• computing a product of the determined functional organ volume index and the determined individual organ function index;
• deriving an individual organ reserve index from the product of the determined functional organ volume index and the determined individual organ function index;
• and
• communicating the derived individual organ function index to a clinician.

A diagnostic method of determining a health condition of an organ of a patient, comprising:

• administering a radioisotope dose to the patient, such that the organ uptakes the radioisotope;
• acquiring imaging data via nuclear medicine imaging from the patient when the radioisotope dose is active in the patient;
• analyzing the acquired image data to determine a functional organ volume index and an individual organ function index;
• generating a differential graph of the functional organ volume index and the determined individual organ function index;
• staging a health of the organ based on a location of a coordinate of the determined functional organ volume index and the determined individual organ function index within one of a plurality of regions of the differential graph;
• and
• communicating the staged health of the organ to a clinician.

A diagnostic method of determining a health condition of an organ of a patient, comprising:

• administering a radioisotope dose to the patient, such that the organ uptakes the radioisotope;
• acquiring imaging data via nuclear medicine imaging from the patient when the radioisotope dose is active in the patient;
• analyzing the acquired image data to determine a functional organ volume index and an individual organ function index;
• repeating the radioisotope administering, image data acquisition, and acquired image data analyzing steps to determine a plurality of functional organ volume indices and plurality of individual organ function indices;
• generating a differential graph of the determined plurality of functional organ volume indices and the determined plurality of individual organ function indices;
• determining a trajectory based on locations of coordinates of the determined plurality of functional organ volume indices and the determined plurality of individual organ function indices in the differential graph;
• determining an organ disease prognosis of the patient based on the determined trajectory;
• and
• communicating the determined organ disease prognosis to the clinician.