To what extent can artificial neural network support nuclear medicine?

Abstract

Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are computer programs that emulate the operation of a large number of processing units that mimic the fundamental mechanisms of the biological activity of nervous cells as well as their connections and interactions. As a human brain, an ANN has the ability to learn from the experience of general relations between variables and thus ANN are particularly suitable to capture the natural complexity of medical data. Today ANN are widely used as a tool for computer aided diagnosis. This editorial discusses to what extent ANN can support Nuclear Medicine.