基于边界逼近的肺实质分割方法

肺部CT图像的分割是计算机辅助诊断系统处理的一个重要环节,其分割的结果影响到医生的诊断与进一步的分析。由于胸膜结节的灰度与肺实质外围的灰度相近,运用传统的分割方法无法正确分割出此类病灶。将胸膜结节包含肺实质一起分割出来,使计算机辅助诊断系统能够对此类病灶做进一步的分析。提出一种结合Graham算法以及边界逼近的方法,对肺实质的轮廓进行修正,进而得到修正的二值模板;将该模板与原图像做乘运算,得到包含胸膜结节的肺实质。运用所提出的方法,对公开数据库LIDC中68张含病灶的CT样本图像做处理,通过与传统方法的对比以及对算法的过分割比例、欠分割比例以及准确性的分析,得到准确率为98.5%,平均过分割比例为1.35%,平均欠分割比例为0.51%,证明了该方法的有效性。     

基于改进凸包算法的肺实质分割研究

肺实质的精确分割一直都是肺部疾病计算机辅助诊断的重要研究内容,传统的分割方法大多只能分割出不包含病灶的肺实质区域,为后期的图像分析与辅助决策带来很大的影响。针对具有边缘型肺结节的肺部CT图像,提出一种实现简单且实验效果较好的肺实质分割算法。首先,利用常规方法提取肺实质的粗略轮廓;然后,针对上一步骤中肺实质病灶信息等的缺失现象,提出一种改进的二维凸包算法对肺实质的外轮廓进行再修复;最后,利用区域生长和形态学运算,修复肺实质的内部轮廓。运用新算法,对200张边缘型肺结节的肺部CT图像进肺实质分割。实验结果表明：与已有的“滚球法”和凸包算法修复肺实质相比,新算法具有较高的准确率,可以达到90%以上,边缘型肺结节等病灶信息能被较为准确地表示出来,为建立高效的肺部疾病诊断系统奠定基础。     

肺结节检测算法研究

探讨基于CT图像数据的肺结节自动检测算法.肺结节提取一般步骤为:CT图像预处理、肺实质分割、肺结节提取.     

CT图像肺结节自动检测

肺癌是对人类生命健康危害最大的恶性肿瘤之一。计算机辅助诊断系统对肺部CT图像进行自动分析后,可提示医生可疑肺结节,从而克服医生在诊断中的一些主观因素,为此本文提出了一种基于胸部CT图像的可疑肺结节自动检测算法。首先,根据胸部组织的特殊结构,利用一种新的分割算法提取出肺实质部分;在此基础上提取出灰度与结节相近的感兴趣区域,包括结节、肺血管、支气管;然后,以已标记的结节数据作为样本集,计算结节的面积、灰度均值、灰度方差、圆形度、形状矩、体积、球形度等特征值,利用最近邻法建立分类器判别函数;最后,计算测试集感兴趣区域的上述特征,对其进行判别、分类,并标记出结节。试验结果表明,该算法综合考虑了肺结节特征,具有较高的准确度。     

基于3DV-Net的肺结节检测分割算法

目的：提出基于深度学习的肺结节识别与分割算法,以辅助医生进行肺部疾病检测。方法：针对LUNA16数据集数据量大以及肺结节种类大小多样性等特征,采用基于改进的深度神经网络3DV-Net实现多种肺结节的检测分割,然后使用ResNet对结节图像和非结节图像进行分类。对LUNA16数据集中的肺部CT图像进行图像去噪、插值采样等预处理,然后生成粗分割图像和Mask图像,再使用改进的3DV-Net模型对数据进行多次训练预测。网络层级越深,出现梯度消散、梯度爆炸等问题的概率越大,改进的3DV-Net使用残差连接来改善这一问题。结果：改进的3DV-Net的Dice相似系数和IoU分别达到88.29%和88.25%。结论：本文方法有助于肺结节的检测分割,在肺结节的辅助诊断方面有重要意义。     

基于肺部CT序列图像的肺实质三维分割

目的:肺实质分割是基于CT图像的肺结节计算机辅助检测技术必不可少的步骤。结合阈值技术、连通区域标记以及形态学技术,提出了一种简单有效的从CT图像中分割三维肺实质的方法,以期能为后续肺结节计算机辅助检测技术的研究奠定基础。方法:首先,将原图像二值化,并应用三维连通域标记去除背景及细小空洞;然后,经三维区域生长法去除气管;最后,经形态学滤波平滑肺边界得到肺部精确的三维模板,并采用该模板从CT序列图像中分割出肺实质。结果:根据对20组层厚2.0mm、每组约250个切片的肺部CT临床数据实验验证,其肺实质分割的平均正确度为91.55%,处理单组数据平均耗时167.4563s。结论:实验结果表明,本文方法能自动快速地从CT序列图像中分割出肺实质。     

基于CT图像的肺结节计算机辅助诊断系统

本文介绍了一种基于CT图像的肺结节计算机辅助自动诊断系统。我们将肺结节的自动检测分为肺实质的提取、感兴趣区域（ROI）的分割和ROI特征参数提取及分类判别几个步骤。该系统能够在对肺部CT图像进行自动分析后给医生提示出可疑肺结节，从而提高了医疗诊断效率。     

肺平滑肌瘤性错构瘤合并肺腺癌1例

<正>患者男性,73岁,因咳嗽、咳痰2个月入院。胸部CT示左上肺尖后段近叶间胸膜处见一类圆形结节状密度增高影,形态欠规则,大小18 mm×16 mm,边界模糊,牵拉邻近胸膜,平扫CT值约38 HU,增强扫描呈轻度强化,考虑周围型肺癌。左下肺后基底段胸膜下见一结节影,边界清楚,大小17mm×13 mm,CT值约14 HU,考虑错构瘤。完善相关检查后     

基于低剂量CT图像的肺实质分割方法

为了提高早期肺癌筛查中肺结节计算机辅助检测、辅助诊断的准确性,提出一种多种方法结合的低剂量CT图像肺实质自动分割算法。首先利用改进的多方向形态学滤波算法进行预处理;然后利用聚类法、flood-fill算法去除背景,实现粗分割;接着利用引入霍夫变换的改进三维区域生长算法去除气管和主支气管树;最后利用分水岭算法和二维凸包算法实现肺实质细分割。实验结果通过对ELCAP数据库中的50个低剂量CT序列利用本研究算法进行处理,验证了该算法的有效性,正确分割率达到95.75%。为肺结节检测等后期的诊断提供了有价值的参考信息。     

基于3D ResUnet网络的肺结节分割

目的:将深度残差结构和U-Net网络结合形成新的网络ResUnet,并利用ResUnet深度学习网络结构对胸部CT影像进行图像分割以提取肺结节区域。方法:使用的CT影像数据来源于LUNA16数据集,首先对CT图像预处理提取出肺实质,然后对其截取立体图像块并进行数据增强来扩充样本数,形成相应的肺结节掩膜图像,最后将生成的样本输入到ResUnet模型中进行训练。结果:本研究模型最终的精度和召回率分别为35.02%和97.68%。结论:该模型能自动学习肺结节特征,为后续的肺癌自动诊断提供可靠基础,减少临床诊断的成本并节省医生诊断的时间。 【关键词】肺结节;分割;深度残差结构;召回率;ResUnet     

The Self-Overlap Method for Assessment of Lung Nodule Morphology in Chest CT

Surface morphology is an important indicator of malignant potential for solid-type lung nodules detected at CT, but is difficult to assess subjectively. Automated methods for morphology assessment have previously been described using a common measure of nodule shape, representative of the broad class of existing methods, termed area-to-perimeter-length ratio (APR). APR is static and thus highly susceptible to alterations by random noise and artifacts in image acquisition. We introduce and analyze the self-overlap (SO) method as a dynamic automated morphology detection scheme. SO measures the degree of change of nodule masks upon Gaussian blurring. We hypothesized that this new metric would afford equally high accuracy and superior precision than APR. Application of the two methods to a set of 119 patient lung nodules and a set of simulation nodules showed our approach to be slightly more accurate and on the order of ten times as precise, respectively. The dynamic quality of this new automated metric renders it less sensitive to image noise and artifacts than APR, and as such, SO is a potentially useful measure of cancer risk for solid-type lung nodules detected on CT.     

Automated detection of lung nodules in CT scans: preliminary results

We have developed a fully automated computerized method for the detection of lung nodules in helical computed tomography (CT) scans of the thorax. This method is based on two-dimensional and three-dimensional analyses of the image data acquired during diagnostic CT scans. Lung segmentation proceeds on a section-by-section basis to construct a segmented lung volume within which further analysis is performed. Multiple gray-level thresholds are applied to the segmented lung volume to create a series of thresholded lung volumes. An 18-point connectivity scheme is used to identify contiguous three-dimensional structures within each thresholded lung volume, and those structures that satisfy a volume criterion are selected as initial lung nodule candidates. Morphological and gray-level features are computed for each nodule candidate. After a rule-based approach is applied to greatly reduce the number of nodule candidates that corresponds to nonnodules, the features of remaining candidates are merged through linear discriminant analysis. The automated method was applied to a database of 43 diagnostic thoracic CT scans. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to evaluate the ability of the classifier to differentiate nodule candidates that correspond to actual nodules from false-positive candidates. The area under the ROC curve for this categorization task attained a value of 0.90 during leave-one-out-by-case evaluation. The automated method yielded an overall nodule detection sensitivity of 70% with an average of 1.5 false-positive detections per section when applied to the complete 43-case database. A corresponding nodule detection sensitivity of 89% with an average of 1.3 false-positive detections per section was achieved with a subset of 20 cases that contained only one or two nodules per case.     

Automated lung nodule classification following automated nodule detection on CT: a serial approach

We have evaluated the performance of an automated classifier applied to the task of differentiating malignant and benign lung nodules in low-dose helical computed tomography (CT) scans acquired as part of a lung cancer screening program. The nodules classified in this manner were initially identified by our automated lung nodule detection method, so that the output of automated lung nodule detection was used as input to automated lung nodule classification. This study begins to narrow the distinction between the "detection task" and the "classification task." Automated lung nodule detection is based on two- and three-dimensional analyses of the CT image data. Gray-level-thresholding techniques are used to identify initial lung nodule candidates, for which morphological and gray-level features are computed. A rule-based approach is applied to reduce the number of nodule candidates that correspond to non-nodules, and the features of remaining candidates are merged through linear discriminant analysis to obtain final detection results. Automated lung nodule classification merges the features of the lung nodule candidates identified by the detection algorithm that correspond to actual nodules through another linear discriminant classifier to distinguish between malignant and benign nodules. The automated classification method was applied to the computerized detection results obtained from a database of 393 low-dose thoracic CT scans containing 470 confirmed lung nodules (69 malignant and 401 benign nodules). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to evaluate the ability of the classifier to differentiate between nodule candidates that correspond to malignant nodules and nodule candidates that correspond to benign lesions. The area under the ROC curve for this classification task attained a value of 0.79 during a leave-one-out evaluation.     

Automated detection of lung nodules in CT scans: false-positive reduction with the radial-gradient index

We present a number of approaches based on the radial gradient index (RGI) to achieve false-positive reduction in automated CT lung nodule detection. A database of 38 cases was used that contained a total of 82 lung nodules. For each CT section, a complementary image known as an "RGI map" was constructed to enhance regions of high circularity and thus improve the contrast between nodules and normal anatomy. Thresholds on three RGI parameters were varied to construct RGI filters that sensitively eliminated false-positive structures. In a consistency approach, RGI filtering eliminated 36% of the false-positive structures detected by the automated method without the loss of any true positives. Use of an RGI filter prior to a linear discriminant classifier yielded notable improvements in performance, with the false-positive rate at a sensitivity of 70% being reduced from 0.5 to 0.28 per section. Finally, the performance of the linear discriminant classifier was evaluated with RGI-based features. RGI-based features achieved a substantial improvement in overall performance, with a 94.8% reduction in the false-positive rate at a fixed sensitivity of 70%. These results demonstrate the potential role of RGI analysis in an automated lung nodule detection method.     

Deep Learning-based Artificial Intelligence Improves Accuracy of Error-prone Lung Nodules

Introduction: Early detection of lung cancer is one way to improve outcomes. Improving the detection of nodules on chest CT scans is important. Previous artificial intelligence (AI) modules show rapid advantages, which improves the performance of detecting lung nodules in some datasets. However, they have a high false-positive (FP) rate. Its effectiveness in clinical practice has not yet been fully proven. We aimed to use AI assistance in CT scans to decrease FP.Materials and methods: CT images of 60 patients were obtained. Five senior doctors who were blinded to these cases participated in this study for the detection of lung nodules. Two doctors performed manual detection and labeling of lung nodules without AI assistance. Another three doctors used AI assistance to detect and label lung nodules before manual interpretation. The AI program is based on a deep learning framework.Results: In total, 266 nodules were identified. For doctors without AI assistance, the FP was 0.617-0.650/scan and the sensitivity was 59.2-67.0%. For doctors with AI assistance, the FP was 0.067 to 0.2/scan and the sensitivity was 59.2-77.3% This AI-assisted program significantly reduced FP. The error-prone characteristics of lung nodules were central locations, ground-glass appearances, and small sizes. The AI-assisted program improved the detection of error-prone nodules.Conclusions: Detection of lung nodules is important for lung cancer treatment. When facing a large number of CT scans, error-prone nodules are a great challenge for doctors. The AI-assisted program improved the performance of detecting lung nodules, especially for error-prone nodules.     

Automated detection of lung nodules in CT scans: effect of image reconstruction algorithm

We have investigated the effect of computed tomography (CT) image reconstruction algorithm on the performance of our automated lung nodule detection method. Commercial CT scanners offer a choice of several algorithms for the reconstruction of projection data into transaxial images. Different algorithms produce images with substantially different properties that are apparent not only quantitatively, but also through visual assessment. During some clinical thoracic CT examinations, patient scans are reconstructed with multiple reconstruction algorithms. Thirty-eight such cases were collected to form two databases: one with patient projection data reconstructed with the "standard" reconstruction algorithm and the other with the same patient projection data reconstructed with the "lung" reconstruction algorithm. The automated nodule detection method was applied to both databases. This method is based on gray-level-thresholding techniques to segment the lung regions from each CT section to create a segmented lung volume. Further gray-level-thresholding techniques are applied within the segmented lung volume to identify a set of lung nodule candidates. Rule-based and linear discriminant classifiers are used to differentiate between lung nodule candidates that correspond to actual nodules and those that correspond to non-nodules. The automated method that was applied to both databases was exactly the same, except that the classifiers were calibrated separately for each database. For comparison, the classifier then was trained on one database and tested independently on the other database. When applied to the databases in this manner, the automated method demonstrated overall a similar level of performance, indicating an encouraging degree of robustness.     

Lung nodule detection in low-dose and thin-slice computed tomography

A computer-aided detection (CAD) system for the identification of small pulmonary nodules in low-dose and thin-slice CT scans has been developed. The automated procedure for selecting the nodule candidates is mainly based on a filter enhancing spherical-shaped objects. A neural approach based on the classification of each single voxel of a nodule candidate has been purposely developed and implemented to reduce the amount of false-positive findings per scan. The CAD system has been trained to be sensitive to small internal and sub-pleural pulmonary nodules collected in a database of low-dose and thin-slice CT scans. The system performance has been evaluated on a data set of 39 CT containing 75 internal and 27 sub-pleural nodules. The FROC curve obtained on this data set shows high values of sensitivity to lung nodules (80-85% range) at an acceptable level of false positive findings per patient (10-13 FP/scan).     

Lung nodule detection on thoracic computed tomography images: preliminary evaluation of a computer-aided diagnosis system

We are developing a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for lung nodule detection on thoracic helical computed tomography (CT) images. In the first stage of this CAD system, lung regions are identified by a k-means clustering technique. Each lung slice is classified as belonging to the upper, middle, or the lower part of the lung volume. Within each lung region, structures are segmented again using weighted k-means clustering. These structures may include true lung nodules and normal structures consisting mainly of blood vessels. Rule-based classifiers are designed to distinguish nodules and normal structures using 2D and 3D features. After rule-based classification, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is used to further reduce the number of false positive (FP) objects. We performed a preliminary study using 1454 CT slices from 34 patients with 63 lung nodules. When only LDA classification was applied to the segmented objects, the sensitivity was 84% (53/63) with 5.48 (7961/1454) FP objects per slice. When rule-based classification was used before LDA, the free response receiver operating characteristic (FROC) curve improved over the entire sensitivity and specificity ranges of interest. In particular, the FP rate decreased to 1.74 (2530/1454) objects per slice at the same sensitivity. Thus, compared to FP reduction with LDA alone, the inclusion of rule-based classification lead to an improvement in detection accuracy for the CAD system. These preliminary results demonstrate the feasibility of our approach to lung nodule detection and FP reduction on CT images.     

Automatic Lung Segmentation in CT Images with Accurate Handling of the Hilar Region

A fully automated and three-dimensional (3D) segmentation method for the identification of the pulmonary parenchyma in thorax X-ray computed tomography (CT) datasets is proposed. It is meant to be used as pre-processing step in the computer-assisted detection (CAD) system for malignant lung nodule detection that is being developed by the Medical Applications in a Grid Infrastructure Connection (MAGIC-5) Project. In this new approach the segmentation of the external airways (trachea and bronchi), is obtained by 3D region growing with wavefront simulation and suitable stop conditions, thus allowing an accurate handling of the hilar region, notoriously difficult to be segmented. Particular attention was also devoted to checking and solving the problem of the apparent ‘fusion’ between the lungs, caused by partial-volume effects, while 3D morphology operations ensure the accurate inclusion of all the nodules (internal, pleural, and vascular) in the segmented volume. The new algorithm was initially developed and tested on a dataset of 130 CT scans from the Italung-CT trial, and was then applied to the ANODE09-competition images (55 scans) and to the LIDC database (84 scans), giving very satisfactory results. In particular, the lung contour was adequately located in 96% of the CT scans, with incorrect segmentation of the external airways in the remaining cases. Segmentation metrics were calculated that quantitatively express the consistency between automatic and manual segmentations: the mean overlap degree of the segmentation masks is 0.96 ± 0.02, and the mean and the maximum distance between the mask borders (averaged on the whole dataset) are 0.74 ± 0.05 and 4.5 ± 1.5, respectively, which confirms that the automatic segmentations quite correctly reproduce the borders traced by the radiologist. Moreover, no tissue containing internal and pleural nodules was removed in the segmentation process, so that this method proved to be fit for the use in the framework of a CAD system. Finally, in the comparison with a two-dimensional segmentation procedure, inter-slice smoothness was calculated, showing that the masks created by the 3D algorithm are significantly smoother than those calculated by the 2D-only procedure.Key words: CAD, image segmentation, lung nodules, region growing, grid, 3D imaging, biomedical image analysis