Development of a new Python-based cardiac phantom for myocardial SPECT imaging.

Purpose: The aim of this work was to develop a digital dynamic cardiac phantom able to mimic gated myocardial perfusion single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images.

Methods: A software code package was written to construct a cardiac digital phantom based on mathematical ellipsoidal model utilizing powerful numerical and mathematic libraries of python programing language. An ellipsoidal mathematical model was adopted to create the left ventricle geometrical volume including myocardial boundaries, left ventricular cavity, with incorporation of myocardial wall thickening and motion.