Development of Subtraction CT Technique for Detection of Lung Nodules on Low-Dose CT

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Low-dose CT is sensitive in the detection of early lung cancer, however, the interpretation of a large number of CT images is time consuming for radiologists. Therefore, we have developed a subtraction CT technique to assist radiologists for their detection of small lung nodules. In this scheme, the "mask image" for a given section was obtained by a 3 dimensional morphological filtering and line enhancement filtering. The subtraction CT images were obtained by subtracting the warped mask images, which were obtained by iterative image warping technique, from the corresponding CT images. For further reduction of artifacts due to vessels, we employed a line enhancement filter. The extracted line patterns in the target section image were added to the mask image. Thus the artifacts due to vessels in the subtraction image could be eliminated. The subtraction CT images can clearly enhance small lung nodules. The subtraction CT image could be useful for the detection of early lung cancer.