Supervised enhancement filters: application to fissure detection in chest CT scans.
In medical image processing, many filters have been developed to enhance certain structures in 3-D data. In this paper, we propose to use pattern recognition techniques to design more optimal filters. The essential difference with previous approaches is that we provide a system with examples of what it should enhance and suppress. This training data is used to construct a classifier that determines the probability that a voxel in an unseen image belongs to the target structure(s). The output of a rich set of basis filters serves as input to the classifier. In a feature selection process, this set is reduced to a compact, efficient subset. We show that the output of the system can be reused to extract new features, using the same filters, that can be processed by a new classifier. Such a multistage approach further improves performance. While the approach is generally applicable, in this work the focus is on enhancing pulmonary fissures in 3-D computed tomography (CT) chest scans. A supervised fissure enhancement filter is evaluated on two data sets, one of scans with a normal clinical dose and one of ultra-low dose scans. Results are compared with those of a recently proposed conventional fissure enhancement filter. It is demonstrated that both methods are able to enhance fissures, but the supervised approach shows better performance; the areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve are 0.98 versus 0.90, for the normal dose data and 0.97 versus 0.87 for the ultra low dose data, respectively.
van Rikxoort
E M
EM
Image Sciences Institute, Utrecht, The Netherlands. eva@isi.uu.nl
van Ginneken
B
B
Klik
M
M
Prokop
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D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods; D008168:Lung / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D011856:Radiographic Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D011857:Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D013902:Radiography, Thoracic / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*