Patent ID: 6141437
Filing Date: 2000-10-31
Classification: G06T,Y10S

Abstract:
A computer-aided diagnosis method for detecting lung nodules in a digitized original chest image, comprising:a) deriving signal-enhanced and signal-suppressed versions of said original chest image and determining the difference therebetween to produce a difference image;b) grey-level thresholding the difference image at plural predetermined gray-level % threshold levels and, at each % threshold level, subjecting those pixels having values greater than respective % threshold level to predetermined morphological tests to identify candidate nodules;c) subjecting the candidate nodules to predetermined rule-based tests based on predetermined image features applied to the corresponding locations in the difference image and in the original image to eliminate from the candidate nodules false-positive nodules, at least one of said tests having rules which vary with respective ones of said % threshold levels; andd) subjecting the candidate nodules remaining after step c) to a trained artificial neural network (ANN) to eliminate further false positive candidate nodules and identify remaining candidate nodules as true positive nodule candidates.