A Software Tool for the Assessment of Salivary Gland Function

Abstract

Salivary gland scintigraphy (SGS) is a noninvasive, simple and reproducible technique for the functional evaluation of salivary gland involvement in patients with Sjögren’s syndrome. Using Labview environment (National Instruments, Austin, Texas) we have developed a software tool for the automatic calculation of most commonly investigated salivary and oral indices derived from salivary time-activity curves. We have shown examples that illustrate the application of the software. Our software enables the comparison of findings among several research centers with the aim of standardizing a processing protocol, defining the reference values of quantitative indices and introducing new salivary indices.

Keywords

• quantitative salivary gland scintigraphy
• Sjögren’s syndrome
• time-activity-curve