METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR THE AUTOMATED DELINEATION OF LUNG REGIONS AND COSTOPHRENIC ANGLES IN CHEST RADIOGRAPHS

摘要

A method, system, and computer product for the automated segmentation of the lung fields and costophrenic angle (CP) regions in posteroanterior (PA) chest radiographs, wherein image segmentation based on gray-level threshold analysis (S3, 1003) is performed by applying an iterative global gray-level thresholding method (S5, 1005) to a chest image based on the features of a global gray-level histogram (S3, 1003). Features of the regions in a binary image constructed at each iteration are identified and analyzed to exclude regions external to the lung fields. The initial lung contours that result from this global process are used to facilitate a local gray-level thresholding method (S6, 1006). Individual regions-of-interest (ROIs) are placed along the initial contour. A procedure is implemented to determine the gray-level thresholds to be applied to the pixels within the individual ROIs. The result is a binary image, from which final contours are constructed.