A fully automated computerized polyp detection (CPD) system is presented that takes DICOM images from CT scanners and provides a list of detected polyps. The system comprises three stages, segmentation, polyp candidate generation (PCG), and false positive reduction (FPR). Employing computer tomographic colonography (CTC), both supine and prone scans are used for improving detection sensitivity. We developed a novel and efficient segmentation scheme. Major shape features, e.g., the mean curvature and Gaussian curvature, together with a connectivity test efficiently produce polyp candidates. We select six shape features and introduce a multi-plane linear discriminant function (MLDF) classifier in our system for FPR. The classifier parameters are empirically assigned with respect to the geometric meanings of a specific feature. We have tested the system on 68 real subjects, 20 positive and 48 negative for 6 mm and larger polyps from colonoscopy results. Using a patient-based criterion, 95% accuracy and 31% specificity were achieved when 6 mm was used as the cutoff size, implying that 15 out of 48 healthy subjects could avoid OC. One 11 mm polyp was missed by CPD but was also not reported by the radiologist. With a complete polyp database, we anticipate that a maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) classifier tuned by supervised training will improve the detection performance. The execution time for both scans is about 10-15 minutes using a 1 GHz PC running Linux. The system may be used standalone, but is envisioned more as a part of a computer-aided CTC screening that can address the problems with a fully automatic approach and a fully physician approach.
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