Computerized scheme for the detection of pulmonary nodules. A nonlinear filtering technique.

To aid radiologists in the detection of lung cancer, the authors are developing a computer-aided diagnosis system that locates areas suspicious for nodules in digital chest radiographs. The system involves a difference-image approach and various feature-extraction techniques. The authors describe nonlinear filters used in the difference-image approach. A morphological open operation and a ring-shaped median filter are applied in the difference-image step for signal enhancement and signal suppression, respectively. Using 60 clinical chest radiographs, the nonlinear filtering method detected approximately 63% of actual nodules with approximately 19 false-positive results per image. The locations of the false-positive detections, however, usually did not coincide with those from the linear filtering method. Thus, by using a combination of the detections from the two methods, the false-positive rate was reduced to two to three per image at a sensitivity of 60%.