Combining mesh volume and streamline representations for polyp detection in ct colonography

CT colonography is a screening technique for adenomatous colorectal polyps, which are important precursors to colon cancer. Computer aided detection (CAD) systems are developed to assist radiologists. We present a CAD system that substantially reduces false positives while keeping the sensitivity high. Hereto, we combine protrusion measures derived from the solution of a non-linear partial differential equation (PDE) applied to both an explicit mesh and an implicit volumetric representation of the colon wall. The shape of the protruding elements is efficiently described via a technique from data visualization based on curvature streamlines. A lowcomplex pattern recognition system based on an intuitive feature from the aforementioned representations improves performance to less than 1.6 false positives per scan at 92% sensitivity per polyp.

@InProceedings { RZBPVV09,
  author       = "Ravesteijn, V.F. van  and Zhao, Lingxiao and Botha, Charl P. and Post, Frits H. and Vos, F.M. and Vliet, L.J.
                  van",
  title        = "Combining mesh volume and streamline representations for polyp detection in ct colonography",
  booktitle    = "Proc. ISBI",
  year         = "2009",
  note         = "2009.08.13",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2009/RZBPVV09"
}