Computer aided diagnostic system incorporating lung segmentation and registration

摘要

A computer aided diagnostic system and automated method diagnose lung cancer through tracking of the growth rate of detected pulmonary nodules over time. The growth rate between first and second chest scans taken at first and second times is determined by segmenting out a nodule from its surrounding lung tissue and calculating the volume of the nodule only after the image data for lung tissue (which also includes image data for a nodule) has been segmented from the chest scans and the segmented lung tissue from the chest scans has been globally and locally aligned to compensate for positional variations in the chest scans as well as variations due to heartbeat and respiration during scanning. Segmentation may be performed using a segmentation technique that utilizes both intensity (color or grayscale) and spatial information, while registration may be performed using a registration technique that registers lung tissue represented in first and second data sets using both a global registration and a local registration to account for changes in a patient's orientation due in part to positional variances and variances due to heartbeat and/or respiration.