title: Automatic heart positioning method in computed tomography scout images.
abstract: Computed tomography (CT) radiation dose can be reduced significantly by region of interest (ROI) CT scan. Automatically positioning the heart in CT scout images is an essential step to realize the ROI CT scan of the heart. This paper proposed a fully automatic heart positioning method in CT scout image, including the anteroposterior (A-P) scout image and lateral scout image. The key steps were to determine the feature points of the heart and obtaining part of the heart boundary on the A-P scout image, and then transform the part of the boundary into polar coordinate system and obtain the whole boundary of the heart using slant elliptic equation curve fitting. For heart positioning on the lateral image, the top and bottom boundary obtained from A-P image can be inherited. The proposed method was tested on a clinical routine dataset of 30 cases (30 A-P scout images and 30 lateral scout images). Experimental results show that 26 cases of the dataset have achieved a very good positioning result of the heart both in the A-P scout image and the lateral scout image. The method may be helpful for ROI CT scan of the heart.
authors.affiliation: School of Sino-Dutch Biomedical & Information Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China Key Laboratory of Medical Imaging Computing (Ministry of Education), Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: School of Sino-Dutch Biomedical & Information Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China.
authors.forename: Kaihua
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: School of Sino-Dutch Biomedical & Information Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China.
authors.forename: Hang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: School of Sino-Dutch Biomedical & Information Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China.
authors.forename: Nan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bao
authors.affiliation: School of Sino-Dutch Biomedical & Information Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China.
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Sino-Dutch Biomedical & Information Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China.
authors.forename: Shi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.affiliation: School of Sino-Dutch Biomedical & Information Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China.
authors.forename: Shouliang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.affiliation: School of Sino-Dutch Biomedical & Information Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China Key Laboratory of Medical Imaging Computing (Ministry of Education), Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kang
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D006321:Heart / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D056888:Patient Positioning / Q000379:methods*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D011829:Radiation Dosage; D011835:Radiation Protection / Q000379:methods; D011856:Radiographic Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D011857:Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*
keywords: CT scout; ROI scan; automatic positioning method; heart positioning