Identifying kidney stone composition from medical imaging

A system for determining the composition of a kidney stone comprising:

• a computed tomography imager;
• a processor;
• an output device;
• and
• a non-transitory computer readable medium storing machine executable instructions and operatively connected to the processor, the machine executable instructions comprising:
• imager interface configured to receive a computed tomography image from the computed tomography imager and provide a bone-windowed computed tomography image from the received computed tomography image;
• a feature extractor configured to provide a plurality of features from the bone-windowed computed tomography image, the plurality of features comprising either a pair of an attenuation values, including a first attenuation value from a first location in or on the kidney stone and a second attenuation value from a second location in or on the kidney stone, or a function of the first and second attenuation values, with the second location being spatially distinct from the first location;
• a classifier configured to select one of a plurality of classes for the kidney stone from the plurality of features, each class representing a specific constituent material;
• and
• a user interface configured to display the class to a user in a human comprehensible form.

A method for determining the composition of a kidney stone comprising:

• obtaining a computed tomography (CT) scan of a region of interest containing a kidney stone at an associated CT imaging system;
• determining a first attenuation value, representing a central region of the kidney stone, and a second attenuation value, representing at least one peripheral region of the kidney stone, from the CT scan;
• selecting a class from a plurality of classes each representing a possible composition of the kidney stone, using at least the first and second attenuation values;
• and
• providing the selected class to a user in a human comprehensible form.