Automated method and system for the delineation of the chest wall in computed tomography scans for the assessment of pleural disease

Abstract

A method, system, and computer program product for automated measurements of pleural space and/or pleural thickening in thoracic CT images to identify the presence and quantify the extent of pleura-based disease, including obtaining a CT image including the pleural space and/or the pleural thickening, segmenting lungs in the obtained image, constructing a chest wall image from the obtained image using a lung boundary obtained in the segmenting step, identifying ribs in the chest wall image, mapping a location of the identified ribs back into the obtained image, and determining in the obtained image the extent of the pleural space and/or the pleural thickening between the identified ribs mapped back into the obtained CT image and at least one segmented lung. Exemplary embodiments include determining the extent of pleural space and/or pleural thickening based on linear distance, area, and volume of the space between the ribs and the lung boundary. These pleural determinations may be used to quantify the extent of disease in a particular case as additional information to be incorporated into a radiologist's decision-making process, or as part of a computer-aided diagnostic scheme that alerts radiologists of the potential for pleural disease in the case.