Abstract: An apparatus and method for obtaining a planar image of a portion (4) of a body (5) and enhancing image quality of at least one specific organ or volume of interest located within the portion (4) of the body (5), administered with radiopharmaceutical substance radiating gamma rays, by using single photon emission imaging, for determination of functional information thereon, comprising: (a) acquiring at least one projection data of the portion (4), by means of a gamma camera detector (2); (b) determining the effective distance between the detector (2) and the specific organ of interest; (c) calculating weight values taking into account acceptance angles of the gamma camera detector (2) and the effective distance; and (d) obtaining a two dimensional image of a spatial distribution of the pharmaceutical substance within the portion (4) by mathematically analyzing the data in conjunction with weight values.

Abstract: A method is disclosed for adaptive filtering of at least one pixel having an initial value of an image composed of pixels. The method comprises: calculating local expected value for the pixel; calculating local signal to noise ratio; calculating local filtration ratio based at least on said local signal to noise ratio; calculating a weighted average of the initial value and local expected value using said local filtration ratio as weight; and assigning the weighted average as a new value for the pixel.

Abstract: An apparatus and method for obtaining a planar image of a portion (4) of a body (5) and enhancing image quality of at least one specific organ or volume of interest located within the portion (4) of the body (5), administered with radiopharmaceutical substance radiating gamma rays, by using single photon emission imaging, for determination of functional information thereon, comprising: (a) acquiring at least one projection data of the portion (4), by means of a gamma camera detector (2); (b) determining the effective distance between the detector (2) and the specific organ of interest; (c) calculating weight values taking into account acceptance angles of the gamma camera detector (2) and the effective distance; and (d) obtaining a two dimensional image of a spatial distribution of the pharmaceutical substance within the portion (4) by mathematically analyzing the data in conjunction with weight values.

Abstract: A method for compressing a digitized image of a document using optical character recognition (OCR). The method includes performing optical character recognition (OCR) on the digitized image, identifying, based, at least in part, on a result of the performing step, a plurality of classes of characters comprised in the image, each the class of characters having an associated character value and comprising at least one character, pruning each class of characters, thereby producing information describing the plurality of classes of characters and a residual image, and utilizing the information describing the plurality of classes of characters and the residual image as a compressed digitized image in further processing. Related methods and apparatus are also disclosed.