Automated Lung Screening System of Multiple Pathological Targets in Multislice CT

• Main Authors: CHANG CHIEN, Kuang Che, 張簡光哲
• Other Authors: LEOU, Jin Jang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/54181240392037840536

博士 === 國立中正大學 === 資訊工程研究所 === 100 === This research aims at developing a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for fully automatic detection and classification of pathological lung parenchyma patterns in idiopathic interstitial pneumonias (IIPs) and emphysema using multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT). The proposed CAD system is based on 3-D mathematical morphology, texture and fuzzy logic analysis, and can be divided into four stages: (1) a multi-resolution decomposition scheme based on a 3-D morphological filter was exploited to discriminate the lung region patterns at different analysis scales. (2) An additional spatial lung partitioning based on the lung tissue texture was introduced to reinforce the spatial separation between patterns extracted at the same resolution level in the decomposition pyramid. Then, (3) a hierarchic tree structure was exploited to describe the relationship between patterns at different resolution levels, and for each pattern, six fuzzy membership functions were established for assigning a probability of association with a normal tissue or a pathological target. Finally, (4) a decision step exploiting the fuzzy-logic assignments selects the target class of each lung pattern among the following categories: normal (N), emphysema (EM), fibrosis/honeycombing (FHC), and ground glass (GDG). The experimental validation of the developed CAD system allowed defining some specifications related with the recommendation values for the number of the resolution levels NRL = 12, and the CT acquisition protocol including the “LUNG” / ”BONPLUS” reconstruction kernel and thin collimations (1.25 mm or less). It also stresses out the difficulty to quantitatively assess the performance of the proposed approach in the absence of a ground truth, such as a volumetric assessment, large margin selection, and distinguishability between fibrosis and high-density (vascular) regions.