Computer-aided diagnosis for pulmonary nodules based on helical CT images

We present a computer assisted automatic diagnostic system for lung cancer that detects nodule candidates at an early stage from helical CT images of the thorax. Our diagnostic system consists of analytic and diagnostic procedures. In the analysis procedure, we extract the lung and the blood vessel regions using a fuzzy clustering algorithm, then we analyze the features of these regions. In the diagnosis procedure, we define diagnostic rules utilizing the extracted features which support the determination of the candidate nodule locations.