<title>CAD system for the assistance of a comparative reading for lung cancer using retrospective helical CT images</title>

The objective of our study is to develop a new computer- aided diagnosis (CAD) system to support effectually the comparative reading using serial helical CT images for lung cancer screening without using the film display. The placement of pulmonary shadows between the serial helical CT images is sometimes different to change the size and the shape of lung by inspired air. We analyzed the motion of the pulmonary structure using the serial cases of 17 pairs, which are different in the inspired air. This algorithm consists of the extraction process of region of interest such as the lung, heart and blood vessels region using thresholding and fuzzy c-means method, and the comparison process of each region in serial CT images using template matching. We validated the efficiency of this algorithm by application to image of 60 subjects. The algorithm could compare the slice images correctly in most combinations with respect to physician's point of view. The experimental results of the proposed algorithm indicate that our CAD system without using the film display is useful to increase the efficiency of the mass screening process.© (2001) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.