Identifying blood vessels in lung x-ray radiographs
AssigneesSiemens Computer Aided Diagnostics, Ltd., Siemens Information Systems, Ltd.
InventorsDinesh Mysore Siddu, Mausumi Acharyya, Jonathan Stoeckel, Sandesh Gupta
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of detecting blood vessel shadows in an anterior posterior x-ray radiograph comprising the steps of: generating candidate sub areas of the radiograph showing changes in contrast above a threshold level; supressing rib shadow edges; eliminating lung tissue shadow edges, and categorizing and eliminating nodule shadows.
Claims12
A method of detecting blood vessels in an anterior posterior x-ray radiograph comprising the steps of:
- a. identifying and suppressing, by a computer, rib shadows in the radiograph;
- b. identifying and suppressing, by the computer, short pieces of edges in the radiograph as indicative of lung tissue shadow edges;
- and
- c. differentiating, by the computer, between nodule edges and blood vessel edges in the radiograph in which the rib shadows and the short pieces of edges are suppressed;
- wherein the step of differentiating between nodule edges and blood vessel edges comprises segmenting lungs into a vassel region having an upper limit at knuckle point on left lung an a lower limit at cardiac notch and weighting candidates within the vessel region as being likely blood vessel candidates based on the candidates' locations.
a method of detecting blood vessels in an anterior posterior x-ray radiograph comprising the step of:
- a. identifying and supressing, by a computer, rib shadows in the radiograph;
- b. identifying and supressing, by the computer, short pieces of edges in the radiograph as indicative of lung tissue shadow edges;
- and
- c. differentiating, by the computer, between nodule edges and blood vessel edges in the radiograph in which the rib shadows and the short pieces of edges are suppressed;
- identifying edges within candidate regions of a post rib suppression image as being part of closed loops and calculating major and minor axes of said closed loops, such that a significant eccentricity of the closed loops as indicated by relative sizes of major and minor axes indicates likelihood of closed loop being edge of a blood vessel shadow, whereas an insignificant eccentricity of the closed loops is indicative of the closed loop being a nodule shadow.
A method of characterizing blood vessel shadows in a sub image of an anterior posterior chest radiograph comprising:
- identifying and suppressing, by a computer, rib edges in the radiograph;
- defining, by the computer, a vessel region in the radiograph having an upper limit at a knuckle point on left lung and a lower limit at cardiac notch;
- and
- weighting, by the computer, edges within the vessel region as being likely blood vessel candidates based on the edges' locations.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.