Patent ID: 7634120

Claim:
A method of classifying candidates in an image in a computer-aided detection (CAD) system, comprising: classifying a lung wall-attached candidate of the image located at a lung wall-attached spatial location using a lung wall-attached classifier for identifying a particular class of object in the lung wall-attached spatial location, wherein the lung wall-attached classifier is trained using training data specific to the lung wall-attached spatial location; classifying a bronchial candidate of the image located at a bronchial spatial location using a bronchial classifier for identifying the particular class of object in the bronchial spatial location, wherein the bronchial classifier is trained using training data specific to the bronchial spatial location; and classifying an inside-lung candidate of the image located at an inside-lung spatial location using an inside-lung classifier for identifying the particular class of object in the inside-lung spatial location, wherein the inside-lung classifier is trained using training data specific to the inside-lung partial location, wherein the lung wall-attached spatial location, the bronchial spatial location, and the inside-lung spatial location are mutually exclusive, and wherein the training data specific to the lung wall-attached spatial location, the training data specific to the bronchial partial location, and the training data specific to the inside-lung spatial location include known and previously-verified data from image data of a plurality of prior subjects.