Segmentation of Pulmonary Nodules in Thoracic CT Scans: A Region Growing Approach

@article{region growing, abstract = {<para> This paper presents an efficient algorithm for segmenting different types of pulmonary nodules including high and low contrast nodules, nodules with vasculature attachment, and nodules in the close vicinity of the lung wall or diaphragm. The algorithm performs an adaptive sphericity oriented contrast region growing on the fuzzy connectivity map of the object of interest. This region growing is operated within a volumetric mask which is created by first applying a local adaptive segmentation algorithm that identifies foreground and background regions within a certain window size. The foreground objects are then filled to remove any holes, and a spatial connectivity map is generated to create a 3-D mask. The mask is then enlarged to contain the background while excluding unwanted foreground regions. Apart from generating a confined search volume, the mask is also used to estimate the parameters for the subsequent region growing, as well as for repositioning the seed point in order to ensure reproducibility. The method was run on 815 pulmonary nodules. By using randomly placed seed points, the approach was shown to be fully reproducible. As for acceptability, the segmentation results were visually inspected by a qualified radiologist to search for any gross misssegmentation. 84\% of the first results of the segmentation were accepted by the radiologist while for the remaining 16\% nodules, alternative segmentation solutions that were provided by the method were selected. </para>}, author = {Dehmeshki, J. and Amin, H. and Valdivieso, M. and Ye, X. }, booktitle = {Medical Imaging, IEEE Transactions on}, citeulike-article-id = {2664417}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMI.2007.907555}, journal = {Medical Imaging, IEEE Transactions on}, keywords = {algorithm, segmentation}, number = {4}, pages = {467--480}, posted-at = {2008-07-19 15:03:41}, priority = {2}, title = {Segmentation of Pulmonary Nodules in Thoracic CT Scans: A Region Growing Approach}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMI.2007.907555}, volume = {27}, year = {2008} }

TY - JOUR ID - region growing L3 - citeulike-article-id:2664417 TI - Segmentation of Pulmonary Nodules in Thoracic CT Scans: A Region Growing Approach T2 - Medical Imaging, IEEE Transactions on JF - Medical Imaging, IEEE Transactions on VL - 27 IS - 4 SP - 467 EP - 480 N2 - <para> This paper presents an efficient algorithm for segmenting different types of pulmonary nodules including high and low contrast nodules, nodules with vasculature attachment, and nodules in the close vicinity of the lung wall or diaphragm. The algorithm performs an adaptive sphericity oriented contrast region growing on the fuzzy connectivity map of the object of interest. This region growing is operated within a volumetric mask which is created by first applying a local adaptive segmentation algorithm that identifies foreground and background regions within a certain window size. The foreground objects are then filled to remove any holes, and a spatial connectivity map is generated to create a 3-D mask. The mask is then enlarged to contain the background while excluding unwanted foreground regions. Apart from generating a confined search volume, the mask is also used to estimate the parameters for the subsequent region growing, as well as for repositioning the seed point in order to ensure reproducibility. The method was run on 815 pulmonary nodules. By using randomly placed seed points, the approach was shown to be fully reproducible. As for acceptability, the segmentation results were visually inspected by a qualified radiologist to search for any gross misssegmentation. 84% of the first results of the segmentation were accepted by the radiologist while for the remaining 16% nodules, alternative segmentation solutions that were provided by the method were selected. </para> KW - algorithm KW - segmentation AU - Dehmeshki, J AU - Amin, H AU - Valdivieso, M AU - Ye, X PY - 2008/// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMI.2007.907555 ER -