Deep Convolutional Architecture for Block-Based Classification of Small Pulmonary Nodules

A pulmonary nodule is a small round or oval-shaped growth in the lung. Pulmonary nodules are detected in Computed Tomography (CT) lung scans. Early and accurate detection of such nodules could help in successful diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. In recent years, the demand for CT scans has increased substantially, thus increasing the workload on radiologists who need to spend hours reading through CT-scanned images. Computer-Aided Detection (CAD) systems are designed to assist radiologists in the reading process and thus making the screening more effective. Recently, applying deep learning to medical images has gained attraction due to its high potential. In this paper, inspired by the successful use of deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) in natural image recognition, we propose a detection system based on DCNNs which is able to detect pulmonary nodules in CT images. In addition, this system does not use image segmentation or post-classification false-positive reduction techniques which are commonly used in other detection systems. The system achieved an accuracy of 63.49% on the publicly available Lung Image Database Consortium (LIDC) dataset which contains 1018 thoracic CT scans with pulmonary nodules of different shapes and sizes

Performance Improvement of Convolutional Neural Network for Pulmonary Nodule Detection

Early detection of the pulmonary nodule is important for diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. Recently, CT has been used as a screening tool for lung nodule detection. And, it has been reported that computer aided detection(CAD) systems can improve the accuracy of the radiologist in detection nodules on CT scan. The previous study has been proposed a method using Convolutional Neural Network(CNN) in Lung CAD system. But the proposed model has a limitation in accuracy due to its sparse layer structure. Therefore, we propose a Deep Convolutional Neural Network to overcome this limitation. The model proposed in this work is consist of 14 layers including 8 convolutional layers and 4 fully connected layers. The CNN model is trained and tested with 61,404 regions-of-interest (ROIs) patches of lung image including 39,760 nodules and 21,644 non-nodules extracted from the Lung Image Database Consortium(LIDC) dataset. We could obtain the classification accuracy of 91.79% with the CNN model presented in this work. To prevent overfitting, we trained the model with Augmented Dataset and regularization term in the cost function. With L1, L2 regularization at Training process, we obtained 92.39%, 92.52% of accuracy respectively. And we obtained 93.52% with data augmentation. In conclusion, we could obtain the accuracy of 93.75% with L2 Regularization and Data Augmentation.ope

An Integrated Framework for the Detection of Lung Nodules from Multimodal Images Using Segmentation Network and Generative Adversarial Network Techniques

Medical imaging techniques are providing promising results in identifying abnormalities in tissues. The presence of such tissues leads to further investigation on these cells in particular. Lung cancer is seen widely and is deadliest in nature if not detected and treated at an early stage. Medical imaging techniques help to identify the presence of suspicious tissues like lung nodules effectively. But it is very difficult to know the presence of the nodule at an early stage with the help of a single imaging modality. The proposed system increases the efficiency of the system and helps to identify the presence of lung nodules at an early stage. This is achieved by combining different methods for reaching a common outcome. Multiple schemes are combined and the extracted features are used for obtaining a conclusion. The accuracy of the system and the results depend on the quality and quantity of the authentic training data. But the availability of the data from an authentic source for the study is a challenging task. Here the generative adversarial network (GAN), is used as a data source generator. It helps to generate a huge amount of reliable data by using a minimum number of real time and authentic data set. Images generated by the GAN are of resolution 1024 x 1024.Fine tuning of the images by using the real images increases the quality of the generated images and thereby improving the efficiency.   Luna 16 is the primary data source and these images are used for the generation of 1000000 images. Training process with the huge dataset improves the capability of the proposed system. Various parameters are considered for evaluating the performance of the proposed system. Comparative analysis with existing systems highlights the strengths of the proposed system

Highly accurate model for prediction of lung nodule malignancy with CT scans

Computed tomography (CT) examinations are commonly used to predict lung nodule malignancy in patients, which are shown to improve noninvasive early diagnosis of lung cancer. It remains challenging for computational approaches to achieve performance comparable to experienced radiologists. Here we present NoduleX, a systematic approach to predict lung nodule malignancy from CT data, based on deep learning convolutional neural networks (CNN). For training and validation, we analyze >1000 lung nodules in images from the LIDC/IDRI cohort. All nodules were identified and classified by four experienced thoracic radiologists who participated in the LIDC project. NoduleX achieves high accuracy for nodule malignancy classification, with an AUC of ~0.99. This is commensurate with the analysis of the dataset by experienced radiologists. Our approach, NoduleX, provides an effective framework for highly accurate nodule malignancy prediction with the model trained on a large patient population. Our results are replicable with software available at http://bioinformatics.astate.edu/NoduleX