A new approach for automatic analysis of 3D low dose CT images for accurate monitoring the detected lung nodules

Our long term research goal is to develop a fully automated, image-based diagnostic system for early diagnosis of pulmonary nodules that may lead to lung cancer. This paper focuses on monitoring the development of lung nodules detected in successive chest low dose (LD) CT scans of a patient. We propose a new methodology for 3D LDCT data registration which is non-rigid and involves two steps: (i) global alignment of one scan (target) to another scan (reference or prototype) using the learned prior appearance model followed by (ii) local alignment in order to correct for intricate deformations. After equalizing signals for two subsequent chest scans, visual appearance of these chest images is modeled with a Markov-Gibbs random field with pairwise interaction. We estimate the affine transformation that globally register the target to the prototype by gradient descent maximization of a special Gibbs energy function. To handle local deformations, we deform each voxel of the target over evolving closed equi-spaced surfaces (iso-surfaces) to closely match the prototype. The evolution of the iso-surfaces is guided by an exponential speed function in the directions that minimize distances between the corresponding voxel pairs on the iso-surfaces in both the data sets. Preliminary results on the 135 LDCT data sets from 27 patients show that our proper registration could lead to precise diagnosis and identification of the development of the detected pulmonary nodules.