Computerized detection of lung nodules with an enhanced false positive reduction scheme

This thesis is based on the original investigations of the author in the field of computerized lung nodule detection in computed tomography (CT) images. The methodologies discussed in this thesis include two main topics: region of interest detection and enhanced false positive (FP) reduction. The system, which is developed to be a supplementary diagnostic tool for radiologists, first spots all the regions suspected to be nodules in the lung. Then it pins down the candidates with the highest possibility of being nodules through a series of rule based filtering stages. Finally, an enhanced false positive reduction system, which is in fact designed as a hybrid scheme based on learning algorithms, reduces the false positive detections further. The overall system performs with 72% sensitivity and 2.42 FP/slice, which competes with state-of-the-art methods. The system was tested on a database consisting of 24 pediatric clinical subjects with 1190 images and 154 metastatic nodules.