Vessel-feeding pulmonary nodule candidate generation

摘要

A system and method for automatically generating potentially vessel-feeding pulmonary nodule candidates from multi-detector, thin-slice high resolution computed tomography images include a volume examination unit for providing a plurality of images defining a lung volume and examining the lung volume to generate a list of seed objects; a volume of interest generator for selecting a seed from the list and defining a volume of interest comprising the seed within the lung volume; a seed examination unit for extracting a structure of interest comprising the seed from the volume of interest, analyzing the structure of interest by automatically quantifying features therein, and updating the list of seed objects to exclude all unexamined seed objects contained in the current structure of interest under examination; and a candidate generator for generating a candidate from the structure of interest if its features meet preset criteria and providing geometric characteristics of the candidate to other algorithms for detecting pulmonary nodules.