Three-Dimensional Detection of Pulmonary Nodules in Chest CT Images

Small pulmonary nodules are radiologic findings that represent an important challenge in diagnosis systems. While these nodules are the major indicator for lung cancer and metastasis, their properties like size and location play an important role in classifying the benign one from the malignant. Estimating the growth rate of the nodule size states the degree of malignancy. This paper presents a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system to detect small-size pulmonary nodules from the chest computed tomography (CT) images through two dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) methods. Also, a computed volumetric growth is a promising way to distinguish malignant from nonmalignant pulmonary nodules. It was applied to lung nodules (2 to 7 mm in diameter) and achieved sensitivity 94.6% with an average; it is expected to aid radiologists in the detection of small nodules on thin-section multi–detector row CT images.