Title :
Quantitative surface characterization of pulmonary nodules based on thin-section CT images
Author :
Kawata, Y. ; Niki, N. ; Ohmatsu, H. ; Kakinuma, R. ; Eguchi, K. ; Kaneko, M. ; Moriyama, N.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Optical Sci., Tokushima Univ., Japan
Abstract :
Characterization of pulmonary nodules plays a significant role in the differential diagnosis of lung cancer. This paper presents a method to quantify surface characteristics of small pulmonary nodules with well-defined surfaces based on thin-section CT images. The segmentation of the three-dimensional (3-D) nodule images are obtained by a 3-D deformable surfaces approach. The feature extraction algorithms are designed to quantify the surface characteristic parameters from 3-D nodule images by using surface curvatures and ridge lines. Experimental results of the authors´ method applied to the patients 3-D nodule images demonstrate its performance
Keywords :
computerised tomography; feature extraction; image segmentation; lung; medical image processing; 3-D deformable surfaces approach; feature extraction algorithms; lung cancer differential diagnosis; medical diagnostic imaging; pulmonary nodules; quantitative surface characterization; ridge lines; surface curvatures; thin-section CT images; three-dimensional nodule images segmentation; well-defined surfaces; Biopsy; Cancer; Computed tomography; Feature extraction; Hospitals; Image reconstruction; Image segmentation; Lesions; Lungs; Surface reconstruction;
Conference_Titel :
Nuclear Science Symposium, 1997. IEEE
Conference_Location :
Albuquerque, NM
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-4258-5
DOI :
10.1109/NSSMIC.1997.670528
