Paper
11 March 2014 Bone suppression technique for chest radiographs
Zhimin Huo, Fan Xu, Jane Zhang, Hui Zhao, Susan K. Hobbs, John C. Wandtke, Anne-Marie Sykes, Narinder Paul, David Foos
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
High-contrast bone structures are a major noise contributor in chest radiographic images. A signal of interest in a chest radiograph could be either partially or completely obscured or “overshadowed” by the highly contrasted bone structures in its surrounding. Thus, removing the bone structures, especially the posterior rib and clavicle structures, is highly desirable to increase the visibility of soft tissue density. We developed an innovative technology that offers a solution to suppress bone structures, including posterior ribs and clavicles, on conventional and portable chest X-ray images. The bone-suppression image processing technology includes five major steps: 1) lung segmentation, 2) rib and clavicle structure detection, 3) rib and clavicle edge detection, 4) rib and clavicle profile estimation, and 5) suppression based on the estimated profiles. The bone-suppression software outputs an image with both the rib and clavicle structures suppressed. The rib suppression performance was evaluated on 491 images. On average, 83.06% (±6.59%) of the rib structures on a standard chest image were suppressed based on the comparison of computer-identified rib areas against hand-drawn rib areas, which is equivalent to about an average of one rib that is still visible on a rib-suppressed image based on a visual assessment. Reader studies were performed to evaluate reader performance in detecting lung nodules and pneumothoraces with and without a bone-suppression companion view. Results from reader studies indicated that the bone-suppression technology significantly improved radiologists’ performance in the detection of CT-confirmed possible nodules and pneumothoraces on chest radiographs. The results also showed that radiologists were more confident in making diagnoses regarding the presence or absence of an abnormality after rib-suppressed companion views were presented
© (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Zhimin Huo, Fan Xu, Jane Zhang, Hui Zhao, Susan K. Hobbs, John C. Wandtke, Anne-Marie Sykes, Narinder Paul, and David Foos "Bone suppression technique for chest radiographs", Proc. SPIE 9037, Medical Imaging 2014: Image Perception, Observer Performance, and Technology Assessment, 90370D (11 March 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2043754
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CITATIONS
Cited by 2 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Lung

Bone

Chest imaging

Chest

Image segmentation

Databases

Visualization

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