COMPUTER-AIDED DETECTION (CAD) OF A DISEASE

摘要

The present invention relates to a method for performing computer-aided detection (CAD) of a disease, e.g. lung tumours, on a medical image data set (20) from a imaging modality, such as MRI or CT. Initially, there is perform a segmentation of the medical image data set (20) using an anatomical model. Secondly, the segmented data is analyzed for characteristics of the disease resulting in a set of analysis data (25), and finally the set of analysis data (25) is evaluating with respect to the disease. At least one of these steps comprises as an input a position dependent probability (P_r) for the disease. The invention isadvantageous in that more efficient computations can be performed because the degree ofanalysis in a certain region of the part of the patient, e.g. the lung, can be adjusted or tailored to the level of probability of the disease in the that region. It is thereby possible to increase computational speed and thereby diseases like cancer, in particular cancer nodules in the lungs, can be more effectively found from medical image analysis.