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Vol.48 No.6 contents | Japanese/English |
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- The 22nd Lung Cancer Workshop -
Computer-aided Diagnosis for Digital Chest Radiography in Clinical Practice
Shuji Sakai11Department of Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Japan
Some computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems are already commercially available, and in many cases evaluation has commenced at the clinical level. The purpose of CAD is to achieve efficiency in diagnostic work by reducing reading time and improving accuracy. CAD has a great potential for future development by linking imaging equipment such as computed radiography (CR) and flat panel detectors (FPDs) to picture archiving and communications system (PACS). Temporal subtraction is a technique in which a previous chest radiograph is automatically registered with and subtracted from a current radiograph in order to enhance interval changes. On the other hand, nodule detection is expected to be of some help toward the screening of the lung cancer by the use of the digital chest radiography. Temporal subtraction and nodule detection systems for digital chest radiographs have been integrated into our hospital's PACS. Image data of digital chest radiographs were stored in PACS with the digital image and communication in medicine (DICOM) protocol. Moreover, temporal subtraction and nodule detection images were produced automatically in an exclusive server. Reference style of CAD images was changed from the prefetch method into the web technology type. Thus, chest radiologists of our hospital can now perform comparative interpretation of chest radiographs and refer to CAD images with the internet explorer. Furthermore, we have evaluated these CAD systems by various experimental studies. In this review, technique for temporal subtraction and nodule detection for digital chest radiographs and the integration methods of these CAD system into our hospital's PACS were explained.
key words: Lung cancer, Chest radiography, Computer-aided diagnosis, PACS, Soft-copy interpretation
JJLC 48 (6): 741-746, 2008
