Improving performance of computer-aided detection of pulmonary embolisms by incorporating a new pulmonary vascular-tree segmentation algorithm

Abstract

We developed a new pulmonary vascular tree segmentation/extraction algorithm. The purpose of this study was to assess whether adding this new algorithm to our previously developed computer-aided detection (CAD) scheme of pulmonary embolism (PE) could improve the CAD performance (in particular reducing false positive detection rates). A dataset containing 12 CT examinations with 384 verified pulmonary embolism regions associated with 24 threedimensional (3-D) PE lesions was selected in this study. Our new CAD scheme includes the following image processing and feature classification steps. (1) A 3-D based region growing process followed by a rolling-ball algorithm was utilized to segment lung ..