Computer aided diagnosis for severity assessment of pneumoconiosis using CT images

240,000 participants have a screening for diagnosis of pneumoconiosis every year in Japan. Radiograph is used for staging of severity in pneumoconiosis worldwide. This paper presents a method for quantitative assessment of severity in pneumoconiosis using both size and frequency of lung nodules that detected by thin-section CT images. This method consists of three steps. First, thoracic organs (body, ribs, spine, trachea, bronchi, lungs, heart, and pulmonary blood vessels) are segmented. Second, lung nodules that have radius over 1.5mm are detected. These steps used functions of our developed computer aided detection system of chest CT images. Third, severity in pneumoconiosis is quantified using size and frequency of lung nodules. This method was applied to nine pneumoconiosis patients. The initial results showed that proposed method can assess severity in pneumoconiosis quantitatively. This paper demonstrates effectiveness of our method in diagnosis and prognosis of pneumoconiosis in CT screening.

著者英表記誤記あり　(誤)Kazuya Kato→(正)Katsuya Kato
Hidenobu Suzuki, Mikio Matsuhiro, Yoshiki Kawata, Noboru Niki, Katsuya Kato, Takumi Kishimoto, and Kazuto Ashizawa "Computer aided diagnosis for severity assessment of pneumoconiosis using CT images", Proc. SPIE 9785, Medical Imaging 2016: Computer-Aided Diagnosis, 978531 (24 March 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2217480

Copyright 2016 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.