结合Sobel算子和Mask R-CNN的肺结节分割

肺癌不断威胁着人类健康,计算机辅助诊断对肺癌诊断将发挥重要的作用.卷积神经网络(CNNs)在对图像的处理上表现出有目共睹的优秀性能,医学Computed Tomography(CT)图像是用来诊断肺癌的主要检查方式,用深度学习分割病灶的方法可以实现端对端的辅助诊断,这将节省医生的诊断时间,为患者争取最佳治疗时间.LIDC-IDRI(The Lung Image Database Consortium)数据集影像中的癌症部分与其他组织部分的放射密度十分接近,而且往往癌症部分非常小,背景具有非常强的相似性.本文使用传统的Sobel算子对图像中放射密度高的部分进行边缘锐化处理,用强化边缘特征的方法解决前景与背景灰度相似的问题,然后在使用传统的分割方法--阈值分割进一步强化.本文减小Regions of Interest(RoIs)的大小以适应肺结节的特征,减少RoIs的个数以避免过多的负类样例训练产生退化的模型;在传统图像增强处理方法和深度学习的结合下,获得了一个优化的Mask R-CNN模型,在LIDC-IDRI数据集上的测试结果中,基于Intersection over Union(IoU)=0.5的标准下的肺结节平均精度mAP达到72.2%,在FPR为0.226时的TPR达到0.915.     

Hessian based approaches for 3D lung nodule segmentation

In the design of computer-aided diagnosis systems for lung cancer diagnosis, an appropriate and accurate segmentation of the pulmonary nodules in computerized tomography (CT) is one of the most relevant and difficult tasks. An accurate segmentation is crucial for the posterior measurement of nodule characteristics and for lung cancer diagnosis.This paper proposes different approaches that use Hessian-based strategies for lung nodule segmentation in chest CT scans. We propose a multiscale segmentation process that uses the central medialness adaptive principle, a Hessian-based strategy that was originally formulated for tubular extraction but it also provides good segmentation results in blob-like structures as is the case of lung nodules. We compared this proposal with a well established Hessian-based strategy that calculates the Shape Index (SI) and Curvedness (CV). We adapted the SI and CV approach for multiscale nodule segmentation. Moreover, we propose the combination of both strategies by combining the results, in order to take benefit of the advantages of both strategies.Different cases with pulmonary nodules from the Lung Image Database Consortium and Image Database Resource Initiative (LIDC-IDRI) database were taken and used to analyze and validate the approaches. The chest CT images present a large variability in nodule characteristics and image conditions. Our proposals provide an accurate lung nodule segmentation, similar to radiologists performance. Our Hessian-based approaches were validated with 569 solid and mostly solid nodules demonstrating that these novel strategies have good results when compared with the radiologists segmentations, providing accurate pulmonary nodule volumes for posterior characterization and appropriate diagnosis.     

基于神经网络架构搜索的肺结节分类算法

肺结节分类是早期肺癌诊断的重要任务。基于深度学习的肺结节分类方法虽然能够取得良好的分类精度,但存在模型复杂和可解释性差的问题。为此,提出了一种基于神经网络架构搜索的肺结节分类算法。首先,将注意力残差卷积cell作为搜索空间的基本单元,并使用偏序剪枝方法作为搜索策略来构建神经网络架构以搜索3D分类网络,从而达到网络性能和搜索速度的平衡。其次,在网络中构建了多尺度通道和空间注意力模块来提高特征描述和类别推理的可解释性。最后,采用堆叠法将搜索到的网络架构进行多模型的融合,从而获取精准的肺结节良恶性分类预测结果。实验结果表明,在肺结节分类常用数据集LIDC-IDRI上,所提算法与最新肺结节分类算法相比具有较好的分类性能和较快的收敛,且所提算法的特异性和精确率分别达到95.37%和93.42%,能够实现良恶性肺结节的准确分类。     

3D多尺度深度卷积神经网络肺结节检测

目的 肺结节是肺癌的早期存在形式。低剂量CT（computed tomogragphy）扫描作为肺癌筛查的重要检查手段,已经大规模应用于健康体检,但巨大的CT数据带来了大量工作,随着人工智能技术的快速发展,基于深度学习的计算机辅助肺结节检测引起了关注。由于肺结节尺寸差别较大,在多个尺度上表示特征对结节检测任务至关重要。针对结节尺寸差别较大导致的结节检测困难问题,提出一种基于深度卷积神经网络的胸部CT序列图像3D多尺度肺结节检测方法。方法 包括两阶段：1）尽可能提高敏感度的结节初检网络;2）尽可能减少假阳性结节数量的假阳性降低网络。在结节初检网络中,以组合了压缩激励单元的Res2Net网络为骨干结构,使同一层卷积具有多种感受野,提取肺结节的多尺度特征信息,并使用引入了上下文增强模块和空间注意力模块的区域推荐网络结构,确定候选区域;在由Res2Net网络模块和压缩激励单元组成的假阳性降低网络中对候选结节进一步分类,以降低假阳性,获得最终结果。结果 在公共数据集LUNA16（lung nodule analysis 16）上进行实验,实验结果表明,对于结节初检网络阶段,当平均每例假阳性个数为22时,敏感度可达到0.983,相比基准ResNet + FPN（feature pyramid network）方法,平均敏感度和最高敏感度分别提高了2.6%和0.8%;对于整个3D多尺度肺结节检测网络,当平均每例假阳性个数为1时,敏感度为0.924。结论 与现有主流方案相比,该检测方法不但提高了肺结节检测的敏感度,还有效地控制了假阳性,取得了更优的性能。     

基于局部灰度最大和改进Mahalanobis距离分类的肺结节检测算法

CT图像中肺结节检测一直是肺癌CAD系统的关键和难点。提出了一种孤立性肺结节自动检测算法,首先对原始CT图像进行有效、准确的肺实质分割;采用寻找局部灰度最大值方法对ROI进行初始分割;再对分割出的各ROI进行特征提取,利用SVM方法对每个特征进行定量描述,根据SVM单特征分类准确率对Mahalanobis距离进行加权改进,最后采用基于改进的Mahalanobis距离进行肺结节分类。实验结果表明,该算法可以较好地提取出CT图像中的孤立性肺结节,具有较高的灵敏度和较低的漏诊率,可以为医生诊断早期肺癌病灶提供帮助信息。     

Dual-branch residual network for lung nodule segmentation

An accurate segmentation of lung nodules in computed tomography (CT) images is critical to lung cancer analysis and diagnosis. However, due to the variety of lung nodules and the similarity of visual characteristics between nodules and their surroundings, a robust segmentation of nodules becomes a challenging problem. In this study, we propose the Dual-branch Residual Network (DB-ResNet) which is a data-driven model. Our approach integrates two new schemes to improve the generalization capability of the model: (1) the proposed model can simultaneously capture multi-view and multi-scale features of different nodules in CT images; (2) we combine the features of the intensity and the convolutional neural networks (CNN). We propose a pooling method, called the central intensity-pooling layer (CIP), to extract the intensity features of the center voxel of the block, and then use the CNN to obtain the convolutional features of the center voxel of the block. In addition, we designed a weighted sampling strategy based on the boundary of nodules for the selection of those voxels using the weighting score, to increase the accuracy of the model. The proposed method has been extensively evaluated on the LIDC-IDRI dataset containing 986 nodules. Experimental results show that the DB-ResNet achieves superior segmentation performance with the dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 82.74% on the dataset. Moreover, we compared our results with those of four radiologists on the same dataset. The comparison showed that our DSC was 0.49% higher than that of human experts. This proves that our proposed method is as good as the experienced radiologist.     

改进U-Net网络的肺结节分割方法

为了对CT图像中的肺结节进行准确地分割,提出了一种基于改进的U-Net网络的肺结节分割方法。该方法通过引入密集连接,加强网络对特征的传递与利用,并且可以避免梯度消失的问题,同时采用改进的混合损失函数以缓解类不平衡问题。在LIDC-IDRI肺结节公开数据库上的实验结果表明,该方法达到的Dice相似系数值、准确率和召回率分别为84.48%、85.35%和83.81%。与其他分割网络相比,该方法能够准确地分割出肺结节区域,具有良好的分割性能。     

基于局部闭值和聚类中心迭代的肺结节检测算法

肺部疾病通常以肺结节的形式表现出来。为了对肺部疾病进行诊断治疗,需要对肺结节进行准确的检测。提出了基于局部阈值和聚类中心迭代的肺结节检测算法。首先,对肺实质图像采用局部阈值算法,提取感兴趣区域(ROIs),并且计算ROIs的形态特征、灰度特征和纹理特征;其次,结合规则、聚类中心迭代和欧式距离,对ROIs进行分类。实验结果表明,所提算法能够较好地检测出孤立性结节、低对比度结节和粘连肺壁结节。     

基于NRU网络的肺结节检测方法

肺癌的早期发现和早期诊断是提高肺癌患者生存率的关键.由于肺癌早期结节很小,目前已有的肺结节检测系统在检测这些结节时很容易漏诊.准确检测早期肺癌结节对于提高肺癌治愈率至关重要,为了降低检测系统对早期结节的漏诊率,需要优化候选结节的提取步骤.在U-Net网络中引入残差网络的捷径,有效解决了传统U-Net网络由于缺乏深度而导...     

Detection and classification of lung nodules in chest X-ray images using deep convolutional neural networks

Lung nodule classification is one of the main topics related to computer-aided detection systems. Although convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been demonstrated to perform well on many tasks, there are few explorations of their use for classifying lung nodules in chest X-ray (CXR) images. In this work, we proposed and analyzed a pipeline for detecting lung nodules in CXR images that includes lung area segmentation, potential nodule localization, and nodule candidate classification. We presented a method for classifying nodule candidates with a CNN trained from the scratch. The effectiveness of our method relies on the selection of data augmentation parameters, the design of a specialized CNN architecture, the use of dropout regularization on the network, inclusive in convolutional layers, and addressing the lack of nodule samples compared to background samples balancing mini-batches on each stochastic gradient descent iteration. All model selection decisions were taken using a CXR subset of the Lung Image Database Consortium and Image Database Resource Initiative dataset separately. Thus, we used all images with nodules in the Japanese Society of Radiological Technology dataset for evaluation. Our experiments showed that CNNs were capable of achieving competitive results when compared to state-of-the-art methods. Our proposal obtained an area under the free-response receiver operating characteristic curve of 7.76 considering 10 false positives per image (FPPI), and sensitivity values of 73.1% and 79.6% with 2 and 5 FPPI, respectively.     

Medical Sign Recognition of Lung Nodules Based on Image Retrieval with Semantic Features and Supervised Hashing

Sign recognition is important for identifying benign and malignant nodules. This paper proposes a new sign recognition method based on image retrieval for lung nodules. First, we construct a deep learning framework to extract semantic features that can effectively represent sign information. Second, we translate the high-dimensional image features into compact binary codes with principal component analysis (PCA) and supervised hashing. Third, we retrieve similar lung nodule images with the presented adaptive-weighted similarity calculation method. Finally, we recognize nodule signs from the retrieval results, which can also provide decision support for diagnosis of lung lesions. The proposed method is validated on the publicly available databases: lung image database consortium and image database resource initiative (LIDC-IDRI) and lung computed tomography (CT) imaging signs (LISS). The experimental results demonstrate our retrieval method substantially improves retrieval performance compared with those using traditional Hamming distance, and the retrieval precision can achieve 87.29% when the length of hash code is 48 bits. The entire recognition rate on the basis of the retrieval results can achieve 93.52%. Moreover, our method is also effective for real-life diagnosis data.     

融合多维度卷积神经网络的肺结节分类方法

针对CT图像肺结节分类任务中分类精度低,假阳性高的问题,提出了一种加权融合多维度卷积神经网络的肺结节分类模型,该模型包含两个子模型：基于二维图像的多尺度密集卷积网络模型,以捕获更宽泛的结节变化特征并促进特征重用;基于三维图像的三维卷积神经网络模型,以充分利用结节空间上下文信息。使用二维和三维CT图像训练子模型,根据子模型分类误差计算其权重,对子模型分类结果进行加权融合,得到最终分类结果。该模型在公共数据集LIDC-IDRI上分类准确率达到94.25%,AUC值达到98%。实验结果表明,加权融合多维度模型可以有效地提升肺结节分类性能。     

基于改进ReliefF与k-means算法的良恶性肺结节分类模型

肺结节是肺癌的症状.在CT图像中,肺结节的形状和大小常被用来进行肺癌的诊断,然而良性和恶性结节的鉴别对于疾病的治疗具有重要意义.由于良恶性结节的边缘纹理特征区别大,因此本文首先利用基于改进的边缘检测算子的灰度-梯度共生矩阵(GGCM)提取小梯度优势、灰度分布不均匀性、能量、灰度熵、梯度熵、混合熵、逆差距、相关性等肺部CT图像的14种纹理特征.然后利用改进的ReliefF算法去除作用小的特征,保留重要特征的特征权重值.最后将重要特征的权重值应用于改进距离度量准则的k-means算法中进行良恶性结节的分类.应用本文算法在LIDC数据集上实验,实验分析结果表明,14种纹理特征对于结节良恶性的分类能力并不相同,而灰度差、梯度差、能量、小梯度优势、相关性、灰度熵、混合熵、逆差矩的组合得到的良恶性肺结节分类效果最好,最终实现了良性结节83.46%,恶性结节95.02%的识别率,可在临床应用中辅助医生进行肺结节的良恶性诊断.     

Pulmonary nodules recognition based on parallel cross-convolution

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Lung cancer is the highest incidence rate and mortality rate in human beings. Pulmonary nodules are the early manifestation of lung cancer. The accurate...     

Intensity-based statistical features for classification of lungs CT scan nodules using artificial intelligence techniques

A computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) system for effective and accurate pulmonary nodule detection is required to detect the nodules at early stage. This paper proposed a novel technique to detect and classify pulmonary nodules based on statistical features for intensity values using support vector machine (SVM). The significance of the proposed technique is, it uses the nodules features in 2D & 3D and also SVM for the classification that is good to classify the nodules extracted from the image. The lung volume is extracted from Lung CT using thresholding, background removal, hole-filling and contour correction of lung lobe. The candidate nodules are extracted and pruned using the rules based on ground truth of nodules. The statistical features for intensity values are extracted from candidate nodules. The nodule data are up-samples to reduce the biasness. The classifier SVM is trained using data samples. The efficiency of proposed CAD system is tested and evaluated using Lung Image Consortium Database (LIDC) that is standard data-set used in CAD Systems for Lungs Nodule classification. The results obtained from proposed CAD system are good as compare to previous CAD systems. The sensitivity of 96.31% is achieved in the proposed CAD system.     

基于三维各向异性卷积的肺结节良恶性分类

计算机断层扫描（Computer Tomography,CT）图像中肺结节的良恶性诊断对治疗方案的选择有非常重要的作用。目前基于深度学习的CT图像肺结节良恶性分类算法的一个研究趋势是充分利用CT图像的三维信息来设计网络,但由于不同CT设备采集的图像参数不同,不同样本的CT图像其层内及层间分辨率也多不相同,进行特征提取前需要进行额外的预处理工作。大多数文献的做法是采用插值的方法统一分辨率,然而这种方法会造成图像分辨率降低或计算量增加等问题。针对这一问题,提出了一种基于三维各向异性卷积的肺结节良恶性分类网络,通过将标准三维卷积拆分为[k×k×1]和[1×1×k]的两种三维各向异性卷积,避免了直接将三维卷积作用到原始CT图像上,从而避免了图像分辨率不同的影响。还提出了裁剪-非局部池化模块,通过中心裁剪和非局部池化操作,强化网络对结节区域的特征提取,同时使浅层网络也可以获取全局信息。在Lung Image Database Consortium and Image Database Resource Initiative（LIDC-IDRI）数据集上的实验表明,提出的三维各向异性卷积结合裁剪-非局部池化操作的神经网络能显著减少网络参数量,提升网络提取特征的能力,实现对肺结节良恶性的准确分类,分类的准确率、敏感性、特异性分别为91.53%、88.89%和93.27%,取得了比较好的分类性能。     

Automated detection of lung nodules in computed tomography images: a review

Lung nodules refer to a range of lung abnormalities the detection of which can facilitate early treatment for lung patients. Lung nodules can be detected by radiologists through examining lung images. Automated detection systems that locate nodules of various sizes within lung images can assist radiologists in their decision making. This paper presents a study of the existing methods on automated lung nodule detection. It introduces a generic structure for lung nodule detection that can be used to represent and describe the existing methods. The structure consists of a number of components including: acquisition, pre-processing, lung segmentation, nodule detection, and false positives reduction. The paper describes the algorithms used to realise each component in different systems. It also provides a comparison of the performance of the existing approaches.     

应用于CT图像肺结节检测的深度学习方法综述

肺癌是世界上死亡率最高的癌症，通过胸部CT影像检测肺结节对肺癌早期诊断和治疗意义重大。为了减轻放射科医生的工作量以及同时减少误诊率和漏诊率，研究人员提出了计算机辅助检测（CAD）系统辅助放射科医生检测和诊断肺结节。目前，研究人员正在尝试不同的深度学习技术，以提高计算机辅助诊断系统在基于CT图像的肺癌筛查中的性能。这项工作回顾了作为肺癌检测的CAD系统目前典型的深度学习的算法和框架，主要从数据集介绍、2D深度学习方法、3D深度学习方法、数据不平衡问题的处理、模型训练方法以及模型可解释性这六个方面进行介绍。最后，对各个方法的主要特点和算法性能进行了综合比较分析，并对如何提高结节检测性能进行了展望。     

肺结节球表面网格向量化特征分类

目的 基于球谐函数与容斥映射算法向量化球面表面纹理与结节形状用以进行胸部CT图像肺结节良恶性判定。区别于基于深度学习解决肺结节良恶性筛查的方法,目前方法多集中于框架改进而忽略了数据预处理,文中所提方法旨在对球面纹理与结节形状进行向量表达,使其可以输入深度森林进行特征分类训练。方法 首先采用辽宁中医药大学附属医院数据,通过3维重构获得3维肺结节图像。其次使用球谐函数与容斥映射算法在保留空间信息的同时将纹理以网格方式映射到标准球面上。再次使用网格-LBP与映射形变能量分别完成对球面纹理与结节形状信息的构建。最后提出一种基于网格的多粒度扫描方法对深度森林训练框架进行改进,并将向量化后的纹理和形状特征加入到改进的深度森林训练框架中进行实验验证。结果 通过大量的实验结果验证,在准确率（ACC）、特异度（SPE）、敏感度（SEN）和受试者工作特征曲线下的面积（AUC）4个衡量指标下,本文方法具有优于现存先进方法的表现,其中ACC、SPE、SEN和AUC分别达到76.06%、69.46%、88.46%和0.84。结论 基于球谐函数与容斥映射算法可成功地对肺结节表面和形状两个特征进行向量化并训练,不仅考虑了数据预处理,而且通过两个特征对肺结节良恶性检测的准确率要高于传统1个特征检测的结果,同时也为3维模型中特征的提取及向量化提供了一个有效的方法。