Surface curvature estimation for automatic colonic polyp detection

Adam Huang; Ronald M. Summers M.D.; Amy K. Hara M.D.

doi:10.1117/12.594644

14 April 2005 Surface curvature estimation for automatic colonic polyp detection

Adam Huang, Ronald M. Summers M.D., Amy K. Hara M.D.

Proceedings Volume 5746, Medical Imaging 2005: Physiology, Function, and Structure from Medical Images; (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.594644
Event: Medical Imaging, 2005, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Colonic polyps are growths on the inner wall of the colon. They appear like elliptical protrusions which can be detected by curvature-derived shape discriminators. For reasons of computation efficiency, much of the past work in computer-aided diagnostic CT colonography adopted kernel-based convolution methods in curvature estimation. However, kernel methods can yield erroneous results at thin structures where the gradient diminishes. In this paper, we investigate three surface patch fitting methods: Cubic B-spline, paraboloid, and quadratic polynomials. This "patch" approach is based on the fact that a surface can be re-oriented such that it can be approximated by a bivariate function locally. These patch methods are evaluated by synthesized data with various orientations and sampling sizes. We find that the cubic spline method performs best regardless of large orientation variances. Cubic spline and quadratic polynomial methods perform equally well for large samples while the latter performs better for small ones. Based on the performance evaluation, we propose a new, two-stage curvature estimation method. The cubic spline fitting is performed first for its insensitivity to orientation. If the spline fitting errs by more than a preset value (indicating high surface tortuosity), a small data sample is fitted by a quadratic function. The evaluation is performed on 29 patients (58 data sets). With 88.7% sensitivity, the average number of false positives per data set is reduced by 44.5% from 33.5 (kernel method) to 18.6 (new method).

Citation Download Citation

Adam Huang, Ronald M. Summers M.D., and Amy K. Hara M.D. "Surface curvature estimation for automatic colonic polyp detection", Proc. SPIE 5746, Medical Imaging 2005: Physiology, Function, and Structure from Medical Images, (14 April 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.594644

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available