Clarification of lung nodules on chest X-ray images

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a method for clearly visualizing a pulmonary nodule from a chest X-ray image.SOLUTION: A method of the invention comprises: a step S2 for creating a pulmonary nodule enhancement image from a chest X-ray image; a step S3 for creating a linear shadow enhancement image from the chest X-ray image; a step S4 for using a two-dimensional histogram in which the pulmonary nodule enhancement image is provided on a p-axis and the linear shadow enhancement image is provided on a q-axis, and a first extraction curve for extracting a pulmonary hilum lung blood vessel shadow as a linear shadow, from the pulmonary nodule enhancement image; a step S5 for on the basis of the pulmonary nodule enhancement image and an image obtained by applying a maximum value filter to the pulmonary nodule enhancement image, suppressing a luminance value of the pulmonary hilum lung blood vessel shadow thereby creating a linear shadow suppression image; a step S6 for extracting a false positive shadow by using the above-mentioned two-dimensional histogram and a second extraction curve; and a step S7 for repeating the step for extracting the false positive shadow until a total pixel number of the false positive shadow exceeds a predetermined threshold.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1