Autonomous detection of pulmonary nodules on CT images with a neural network-based fuzzy system

Adaptive Fruitfly Based Modified Region Growing Algorithm for Cardiac Fat Segmentation Using Optimal Neural Network

Epicardial adipose tissue is a visceral fat that has remained an entity of concern for decades owing to its high correlation with coronary heart disease. It continues to stump medical practitioners on the pretext of its relevance with pericardial fat and its dependence on a numerous other parameters including ethnicity and physique of an individual. This calls for a fool-proof algorithm that promises accurate classification and segmentation, hence an immaculate prediction. CT is immensely popular and widely preferred for diagnosis. Implementation of an improvised algorithm in CT would be a natural necessity. This research work proposes a Fruitfly Algorithm based Modified region growing algorithm is applied to the acquired CT images to segment fat accurately. The proposed methodology promises image registration and classification in order to segment two cardiac fats namely epicardial, pericardial and mediastinal. The main contributions are (1) Fat feature extraction: Construction of GLCM features CT image (2) Development of GWO based optimal neural network for classification; (3) Modeling the fat segmentation using modified region growing algorithm with Fruitfly optimization. The entire experimentation has been implemented in MATLAB simulation environment and final result is expected to flaunt a definite distinction between cardiac mediastinal and epicardial fats. Parallely, the accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, FPR and FNR have been stated and contrasted methodically with the existing methodology. This venture aims at spurring the healthcare industry towards smarter computational techniques that multiplies efficiency manifold.

3D skeletonization feature based computer-aided detection system for pulmonary nodules in CT datasets

Pulmonary nodule detection has a significant impact on early diagnosis of lung cancer. To effectively detect pulmonary nodules from interferential vessels in chest CT datasets, this paper proposes a novel 3D skeletonization feature, named as voxels remove rate. Based on this feature, a computer-aided detection system is constructed to validate its performance. The system mainly consists of five stages. Firstly, the lung tissues are segmented by a global optimal active contour model, which can extract all structures (including juxta-pleural nodules) in the lung region. Secondly, thresholding, 3D binary morphological operations, and 3D connected components labeling are utilized to extract candidates of pulmonary nodules. Thirdly, combining the voxels remove rate with other nine existing 3D features (including gray features and shape features), the extracted candidates are characterized. Then, prior anatomical knowledge is utilized for preliminary screening of numerous invalid nodule candidates. Finally, false positives are reduced by support vector machine. Our system is evaluated on early stage lung cancer subjects obtained from the publicly available LIDC-IDRI database. The result shows the proposed 3D skeletonization feature is a useful indicator that efficiently differentiates lung nodules from the other suspicious structures. The computer-aided detection system based on this feature can detect various types of nodules, including solitary, juxta-pleural and juxta-vascular nodules.

Thorax disease diagnosis using deep convolutional neural network

Computer aided diagnosis (CAD) is an important issue, which can significantly improve the efficiency of doctors. In this paper, we propose a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) based method for thorax disease diagnosis. We firstly align the images by matching the interest points between the images, and then enlarge the dataset by using Gaussian scale space theory. After that we use the enlarged dataset to train a deep CNN model and apply the obtained model for the diagnosis of new test data. Our experimental results show our method achieves very promising results.

Computer-aided lung nodule recognition by SVM classifier based on combination of random undersampling and SMOTE

In lung cancer computer-aided detection/diagnosis (CAD) systems, classification of regions of interest (ROI) is often used to detect/diagnose lung nodule accurately. However, problems of unbalanced datasets often have detrimental effects on the performance of classification. In this paper, both minority and majority classes are resampled to increase the generalization ability. We propose a novel SVM classifier combined with random undersampling (RU) and SMOTE for lung nodule recognition. The combinations of the two resampling methods not only achieve a balanced training samples but also remove noise and duplicate information in the training sample and retain useful information to improve the effective data utilization, hence improving performance of SVM algorithm for pulmonary nodules classification under the unbalanced data. Eight features including 2D and 3D features are extracted for training and classification. Experimental results show that for different sizes of training datasets our RU-SMOTE-SVM classifier gets the highest classification accuracy among the four kinds of classifiers, and the average classification accuracy is more than 92.94%.

A fully automatic method for lung parenchyma segmentation and repairing

Considering that the traditional lung segmentation algorithms are not adaptive for the situations that most of the juxtapleural nodules, which are excluded as fat, and lung are not segmented perfectly. In this paper, several methods are comprehensively utilized including optimal iterative threshold, three-dimensional connectivity labeling, three-dimensional region growing for the initial segmentation of the lung parenchyma, based on improved chain code, and Bresenham algorithms to repair the lung parenchyma. The paper thus proposes a fully automatic method for lung parenchyma segmentation and repairing. Ninety-seven lung nodule thoracic computed tomography scans and 25 juxtapleural nodule scans are used to test the proposed method and compare with the most-cited rolling-ball method. Experimental results show that the algorithm can segment lung parenchyma region automatically and accurately. The sensitivity of juxtapleural nodule inclusion is 100 %, the segmentation accuracy of juxtapleural nodule regions is 98.6 %, segmentation accuracy of lung parenchyma is more than 95.2 %, and the average segmentation time is 0.67 s/frame. The algorithm can achieve good results for lung parenchyma segmentation and repairing in various cases that nodules/tumors adhere to lung wall.

Classification of pulmonary nodules by using hybrid features

Early detection of pulmonary nodules is extremely important for the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. In this study, a new classification approach for pulmonary nodules from CT imagery is presented by using hybrid features. Four different methods are introduced for the proposed system. The overall detection performance is evaluated using various classifiers. The results are compared to similar techniques in the literature by using standard measures. The proposed approach with the hybrid features results in 90.7% classification accuracy (89.6% sensitivity and 87.5% specificity).

Detection of pulmonary nodules in CT images based on fuzzy integrated active contour model and hybrid parametric mixture model

The segmentation and detection of various types of nodules in a Computer-aided detection (CAD) system present various challenges, especially when (1) the nodule is connected to a vessel and they have very similar intensities; (2) the nodule with ground-glass opacity (GGO) characteristic possesses typical weak edges and intensity inhomogeneity, and hence it is difficult to define the boundaries. Traditional segmentation methods may cause problems of boundary leakage and “weak” local minima. This paper deals with the above mentioned problems. An improved detection method which combines a fuzzy integrated active contour model (FIACM)-based segmentation method, a segmentation refinement method based on Parametric Mixture Model (PMM) of juxta-vascular nodules, and a knowledge-based C-SVM (Cost-sensitive Support Vector Machines) classifier, is proposed for detecting various types of pulmonary nodules in computerized tomography (CT) images. Our approach has several novel aspects: (1) In the proposed FIACM model, edge and local region information is incorporated. The fuzzy energy is used as the motivation power for the evolution of the active contour. (2) A hybrid PMM Model of juxta-vascular nodules combining appearance and geometric information is constructed for segmentation refinement of juxta-vascular nodules. Experimental results of detection for pulmonary nodules show desirable performances of the proposed method.

A pulmonary nodule view system for the Lung Image Database Consortium (LIDC)

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study was to develop a pulmonary nodule viewing system to visualize and retrieve data from the Lung Image Database Consortium.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The pulmonary nodule viewing system, developed using Microsoft C++ and the .NET 2.0 Framework, is composed of a clinical information integrator, a nodule viewer, a search engine, and a data model.

RESULTS

A pulmonary nodule viewing system using Lung Image Database Consortium data for computer-aided diagnosis research and training purpose was developed.

CONCLUSIONS

The pulmonary nodule viewing system can be used to build a pulmonary nodule database for computer-aided diagnosis research and medical education. It can also be used to view and retrieve large data sets efficiently.

Computer-aided diagnosis of lung cancer and pulmonary embolism in computed tomography-a review

Computer-aided detection (CADe) and computer-aided diagnosis (CADx) have been important areas of research in the last two decades. Significant progress has been made in the area of breast cancer detection, and CAD techniques are being developed in many other areas. Recent advances in multidetector row computed tomography have made it an increasingly common modality for imaging of lung diseases. A thoracic examination using thin-section computed tomography contains hundreds of images. Detection of lung cancer and pulmonary embolism on computed tomographic (CT) examinations are demanding tasks for radiologists because they have to search for abnormalities in a large number of images, and the lesions can be subtle. If successfully developed, CAD can be a useful second opinion to radiologists in thoracic CT interpretation. In this review, we summarize the studies that have been reported in these areas, discuss some challenges in the development of CAD, and identify areas that deserve particular attention in future research.

Lung metastases detection in CT images using 3D template matching

The aim of this study is to demonstrate a novel, fully automatic computer detection method applicable to metastatic tumors to the lung with a diameter of 4-20 mm in high-risk patients using typical computed tomography (CT) scans of the chest. Three-dimensional (3D) spherical tumor appearance models (templates) of various sizes were created to match representative CT imaging parameters and to incorporate partial volume effects. Taking into account the variability in the location of CT sampling planes cut through the spherical models, three offsetting template models were created for each appearance model size. Lung volumes were automatically extracted from computed tomography images and the correlation coefficients between the subregions around each voxel in the lung volume and the set of appearance models were calculated using a fast frequency domain algorithm. To determine optimal parameters for the templates, simulated tumors of varying sizes and eccentricities were generated and superposed onto a representative human chest image dataset. The method was applied to real image sets from 12 patients with known metastatic disease to the lung. A total of 752 slices and 47 identifiable tumors were studied. Spherical templates of three sizes (6, 8, and 10 mm in diameter) were used on the patient image sets; all 47 true tumors were detected with the inclusion of only 21 false positives. This study demonstrates that an automatic and straightforward 3D template-matching method, without any complex training or postprocessing, can be used to detect small lung metastases quickly and reliably in the clinical setting.