Computer-aided diagnosis of liver tumors on computed tomography images
Journal
Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine
Journal Volume
145
Pages
45-51
Date Issued
2017
Author(s)
Chen, H.-H.
Yang, M.-Y.
Lo, C.-M.
Abstract
Background and objective Liver cancer is the tenth most common cancer in the USA, and its incidence has been increasing for several decades. Early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease are very important. Computed tomography (CT) is one of the most common and robust imaging techniques for the detection of liver cancer. CT scanners can provide multiple-phase sequential scans of the whole liver. In this study, we proposed a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system to diagnose liver cancer using the features of tumors obtained from multiphase CT images. Methods A total of 71 histologically-proven liver tumors including 49 benign and 22 malignant lesions were evaluated with the proposed CAD system to evaluate its performance. Tumors were identified by the user and then segmented using a region growing algorithm. After tumor segmentation, three kinds of features were obtained for each tumor, including texture, shape, and kinetic curve. The texture was quantified using 3 dimensional (3-D) texture data of the tumor based on the grey level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM). Compactness, margin, and an elliptic model were used to describe the 3-D shape of the tumor. The kinetic curve was established from each phase of tumor and represented as variations in density between each phase. Backward elimination was used to select the best combination of features, and binary logistic regression analysis was used to classify the tumors with leave-one-out cross validation. Results The accuracy and sensitivity for the texture were 71.82% and 68.18%, respectively, which were better than for the shape and kinetic curve under closed specificity. Combining all of the features achieved the highest accuracy (58/71, 81.69%), sensitivity (18/22, 81.82%), and specificity (40/49, 81.63%). The Az value of combining all features was 0.8713. Conclusions Combining texture, shape, and kinetic curve features may be able to differentiate benign from malignant tumors in the liver using our proposed CAD system. ? 2017 Elsevier B.V.
SDGs
Other Subjects
Computerized tomography; Diagnosis; Diseases; Imaging techniques; Kinetics; Liver; Regression analysis; Statistical methods; Tomography; Tumors; Backward elimination; Binary logistic regression; Computed tomography images; Computer Aided Diagnosis(CAD); Grey level co-occurrence matrixes; Kinetic curves; Leave-one-out cross validations; Region growing algorithm; Computer aided diagnosis; Article; bile duct carcinoma; cancer diagnosis; cancer size; computed tomography scanner; computer assisted tomography; diagnostic accuracy; human; human tissue; image analysis; image enhancement; image segmentation; liver adenoma; liver cancer; liver cell carcinoma; liver focal nodular hyperplasia; liver hemangioma; liver metastasis; major clinical study; predictive value; radiodiagnosis; retrospective study; sensitivity and specificity; algorithm; computer assisted diagnosis; diagnostic imaging; liver tumor; x-ray computed tomography; Algorithms; Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; Humans; Liver Neoplasms; Sensitivity and Specificity; Tomography, X-Ray Computed
Type
journal article