Enhancement of Lung Nodule Detection in Temporal Thoracic CT

Several 3-D tools were developed to facilitate the radiologists for the examination of thoracic CT images. The image functions include segmentation of suspected regions, characterization of the nodules, localized 3-D view of the nodules, 3-D transparent view, 3-D image matching and 3-D volume registration. The last two functions are particularly useful for the temporal CT examination which the change of suspected regions must be evaluated. The majority of 3-D functions can be used to form a clinical workstation. As far as temporal image matching is concerned, the volume registration method can be made more accurately than slice matching methods. If an image subtraction function is used, fewer artifacts would be associated with the volume registration CT pair than with the slice matching CT pair.