AUTOMATED METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR THE DELINEATION OF THE CHEST WALL IN COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY SCANS FOR THE ASSESSMENT OF PLEURAL DISEASE

摘要

A method, system, and computer program product for automated measurements of pleural space and/or pleural thickening in thoracic CT images to identify the presence and quantify the extent of pleura-based diseases, including obtaining a CT image (S100) including the pleural space and/or the pleural thickening, segmenting lungs in the obtained image (S102), constructing a chest wall image (S104) from the obtained image using a lung boundary obtained in the segmenting step, identifying ribs in the chest wall image, mapping a location of the identified ribs back into the obtained image, and determining in the obtained image the extent of the pleural space and/or the pleural thickening between the identified ribs mapped back into the obtained CT image and at least one segmented lung.