Method for detecting ground glass opacity using chest computed tomography

An apparatus that detects ground glass opacity (GGO), comprising:

• a computer system comprising a processor and a memory;
• a memory unit operating on the computer system and adapted to:
• extract a pulmonary region from a chest computed tomography (CT) image and then edit the pulmonary region into a three-dimensional image,
• detect a GGO candidate by sequentially scanning the three-dimensional image, and
• analyze the GGO candidate to determine and report whether or not GGO occurs,
• wherein the detecting of the GGO candidate comprises:
• detecting a candidate cell having a brightness value within a detection range by sequentially scanning the three-dimensional image of the pulmonary region, and designating the detected candidate cell as a seed cell when surrounding cells of the candidate cell have brightness values within the detection range, and;
• when a plurality of seed cells are obtained by the designating of the candidate cell as a seed cell, grouping adjacent seed cells to obtain one or more candidate zones, and
• detecting one or more zones out of the one or more candidate zones, and setting the detected one or more zones as one or more GGO candidates.

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having processor executable instructions to:

• detect a candidate cell having a brightness value within a detection range of CT values between −800 HU to −200 HU by sequentially scanning a three-dimensional image of a pulmonary region, and designating the candidate cell as a seed cell when surrounding cells of the candidate cell have brightness values within the detection range;
• obtain a plurality of seed cells by the designating of the candidate cell as a seed cell;
• group adjacent seed cells to obtain one or more candidate zones;
• and
• detect one or more zones, which have a greater size than a GGO detection size, out of the one or more candidate zones, and set the detected one or more zones as one or more GGO candidates.