3,877 research outputs found
S4ND: Single-Shot Single-Scale Lung Nodule Detection
The state of the art lung nodule detection studies rely on computationally
expensive multi-stage frameworks to detect nodules from CT scans. To address
this computational challenge and provide better performance, in this paper we
propose S4ND, a new deep learning based method for lung nodule detection. Our
approach uses a single feed forward pass of a single network for detection and
provides better performance when compared to the current literature. The whole
detection pipeline is designed as a single Convolutional Neural Network
(CNN) with dense connections, trained in an end-to-end manner. S4ND does not
require any further post-processing or user guidance to refine detection
results. Experimentally, we compared our network with the current
state-of-the-art object detection network (SSD) in computer vision as well as
the state-of-the-art published method for lung nodule detection (3D DCNN). We
used publically available CT scans from LUNA challenge dataset and showed
that the proposed method outperforms the current literature both in terms of
efficiency and accuracy by achieving an average FROC-score of . We also
provide an in-depth analysis of our proposed network to shed light on the
unclear paradigms of tiny object detection.Comment: Accepted for publication at MICCAI 2018 (21st International
Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention
Towards automatic pulmonary nodule management in lung cancer screening with deep learning
The introduction of lung cancer screening programs will produce an
unprecedented amount of chest CT scans in the near future, which radiologists
will have to read in order to decide on a patient follow-up strategy. According
to the current guidelines, the workup of screen-detected nodules strongly
relies on nodule size and nodule type. In this paper, we present a deep
learning system based on multi-stream multi-scale convolutional networks, which
automatically classifies all nodule types relevant for nodule workup. The
system processes raw CT data containing a nodule without the need for any
additional information such as nodule segmentation or nodule size and learns a
representation of 3D data by analyzing an arbitrary number of 2D views of a
given nodule. The deep learning system was trained with data from the Italian
MILD screening trial and validated on an independent set of data from the
Danish DLCST screening trial. We analyze the advantage of processing nodules at
multiple scales with a multi-stream convolutional network architecture, and we
show that the proposed deep learning system achieves performance at classifying
nodule type that surpasses the one of classical machine learning approaches and
is within the inter-observer variability among four experienced human
observers.Comment: Published on Scientific Report
A novel ultrafast-low-dose computed tomography protocol allows concomitant coronary artery evaluation and lung cancer screening
BACKGROUND:Cardiac computed tomography (CT) is often performed in patients who are at high risk for lung cancer in whom screening is currently recommended. We tested diagnostic ability and radiation exposure of a novel ultra-low-dose CT protocol that allows concomitant coronary artery evaluation and lung screening.
METHODS: We studied 30 current or former heavy smoker subjects with suspected or known coronary artery disease who underwent CT assessment of both coronary arteries and thoracic area (Revolution CT, General Electric). A new ultrafast-low-dose single protocol was used for ECG-gated helical acquisition of the heart and the whole chest. A single IV iodine bolus (70-90 ml) was used. All patients with CT evidence of coronary stenosis underwent also invasive coronary angiography.
RESULTS: All the coronary segments were assessable in 28/30 (93%) patients. Only 8 coronary segments were not assessable in 2 patients due to motion artefacts (assessability: 98%; 477/485 segments). In the assessable segments, 20/21 significant stenoses (> 70% reduction of vessel diameter) were correctly diagnosed. Pulmonary nodules were detected in 5 patients, thus requiring to schedule follow-up surveillance CT thorax. Effective dose was 1.3 ± 0.9 mSv (range: 0.8-3.2 mSv). Noteworthy, no contrast or radiation dose increment was required with the new protocol as compared to conventional coronary CT protocol.
CONCLUSIONS:The novel ultrafast-low-dose CT protocol allows lung cancer screening at time of coronary artery evaluation. The new approach might enhance the cost-effectiveness of coronary CT in heavy smokers with suspected or known coronary artery disease
An Interpretable Deep Hierarchical Semantic Convolutional Neural Network for Lung Nodule Malignancy Classification
While deep learning methods are increasingly being applied to tasks such as
computer-aided diagnosis, these models are difficult to interpret, do not
incorporate prior domain knowledge, and are often considered as a "black-box."
The lack of model interpretability hinders them from being fully understood by
target users such as radiologists. In this paper, we present a novel
interpretable deep hierarchical semantic convolutional neural network (HSCNN)
to predict whether a given pulmonary nodule observed on a computed tomography
(CT) scan is malignant. Our network provides two levels of output: 1) low-level
radiologist semantic features, and 2) a high-level malignancy prediction score.
The low-level semantic outputs quantify the diagnostic features used by
radiologists and serve to explain how the model interprets the images in an
expert-driven manner. The information from these low-level tasks, along with
the representations learned by the convolutional layers, are then combined and
used to infer the high-level task of predicting nodule malignancy. This unified
architecture is trained by optimizing a global loss function including both
low- and high-level tasks, thereby learning all the parameters within a joint
framework. Our experimental results using the Lung Image Database Consortium
(LIDC) show that the proposed method not only produces interpretable lung
cancer predictions but also achieves significantly better results compared to
common 3D CNN approaches
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