A coronary calcification diagnosis system based on helical CT images

The authors describe a computer assisted diagnosis algorithm of coronary calcifications based on helical X-ray CT images which are used at the mass screening process for lung cancer diagnosis. The diagnostic algorithm consists of four processes. Firstly, one chooses the heart slices from the CT images which were taken from the mass screening; the heart slices are classified in three sections. Second, one extracts the heart region on each slice by the shape of the lung area and the body of vertebra. Third, the candidate regions of the coronary calcifications are detected by the difference calculus and thresholding process. Finally, to increase the effectiveness of the diagnostic processing, the authors cancel the artifacts included in the candidate regions by the diagnostic rules defined by them. They show here the result of their algorithm which is applied to helical CT images of 402 patients analyzed for lung cancer screening