A novel approach to CAD system for the detection of lung nodules in CT images

Detection of pulmonary nodule plays a significant role in the diagnosis of lung cancer in early stage that improves the chances of survival of an individual. In this paper, a computer aided nodule detection method is proposed for the segmentation and detection of challenging nodules like juxtavascular and juxtapleural nodules. Lungs are segmented from computed tomography (CT) images using intensity thresholding; brief analysis of CT image histogram is done to select a suitable threshold value for better segmentation results. Simple morphological closing is used to include juxtapleural nodules in segmented lung regions. K-means clustering is applied for the initial detection and segmentation of potential nodules; shape specific morphological opening is implemented to refine segmentation outcomes. These segmented potential nodules are then divided into six groups on the basis of their thickness and percentage connectivity with lung walls. Grouping not only helped in improving system's efficiency but also reduced computational time, otherwise consumed in calculating and analyzing unnecessary features for all nodules. Different sets of 2D and 3D features are extracted from nodules in each group to eliminate false positives. Small size nodules are differentiated from false positives (FPs) on the basis of their salient features; sensitivity of the system for small nodules is 83.33%. SVM classifier is used for the classification of large nodules, for which the sensitivity of the proposed system is 93.8% applying 10-fold cross-validation. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve is used for the analysis of CAD system. Overall sensitivity of the system is 91.65% with 3.19 FPs per case, and accuracy is 96.22%. The system took 3.8 seconds to analyze each image.