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The three-dimensional (3D) voxel labeling of lesions requires significant radiologists’ effort in the development of computer-aided detection software. To reduce the time required for the 3D voxel labeling, we aimed to develop a generalized semiautomatic segmentation method based on deep learning via a data augmentation-based domain generalization framework. In this study, we investigated whether a generalized semiautomatic segmentation model trained using two types of lesion can segment previously unseen types of lesion. We targeted lung nodules in chest CT images, liver lesions in hepatobiliary-phase images of Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MR imaging, and brain metastases in contrast-enhanced MR images. For each lesion, the 32 × 32 × 32 isotropic volume of interest (VOI) around the center of gravity of the lesion was extracted. The VOI was input into a 3D U-Net model to define the label of the lesion. For each type of target lesion, we compared five types of data augmentation and two types of input data. For all considered target lesions, the highest dice coefficients among the training patterns were obtained when using a combination of the existing data augmentation-based domain generalization framework and random monochrome inversion and when using the resized VOI as the input image. The dice coefficients were 0.639 ± 0.124 for the lung nodules, 0.660 ± 0.137 for the liver lesions, and 0.727 ± 0.115 for the brain metastases. Our generalized semiautomatic segmentation model could label unseen three types of lesion with different contrasts from the surroundings. In addition, the resized VOI as the input image enables the adaptation to the various sizes of lesions even when the size distribution differed between the training set and the test set.

Gadolinium ethoxybenzyl diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (Gd-EOB-DTPA)-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has high diagnostic accuracy in the detection of liver lesions. There is a demand for computer-aided detection/diagnosis software for Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI. We propose a deep learning-based method using one three-dimensional fully convolutional residual network (3D FC-ResNet) for liver segmentation and another 3D FC-ResNet for simultaneous detection and classification of a focal liver lesion in Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI. We prepared a five-phase (unenhanced, arterial, portal venous, equilibrium, and hepatobiliary phases) series as the input image sets and labeled focal liver lesion (hepatocellular carcinoma, metastasis, hemangiomas, cysts, and scars) images as the output image sets. We used 100 cases to train our model, 42 cases to determine the hyperparameters of our model, and 42 cases to evaluate our model. We evaluated our model by free-response receiver operating characteristic curve analysis and using a confusion matrix. Our model simultaneously detected and classified focal liver lesions. In the test cases, the detection accuracy for whole focal liver lesions had a true-positive ratio of 0.6 at an average of 25 false positives per case. The classification accuracy was 0.790. We proposed the simultaneous detection and classification of a focal liver lesion in Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI using multichannel 3D FC-ResNet. Our results indicated simultaneous detection and classification are possible using a single network. It is necessary to further improve detection sensitivity to help radiologists.

Purpose To build a novel, open-source, purely web-based platform system to address problems in the development and clinical use of computer-assisted detection/diagnosis (CAD) software. The new platform system will replace the existing system for the development and validation of CAD software, Clinical Infrastructure for Radiologic Computation of United Solutions (CIRCUS). Methods In our new system, the two top-level applications visible to users are the web-based image database (CIRCUS DB; database) and the Docker plug-in-based CAD execution platform (CIRCUS CS; clinical server). These applications are built on top of a shared application programming interface server, a three-dimensional image viewer component, and an image repository. Results We successfully installed our new system into a Linux server at two clinical sites. A total of 1954 cases were registered in CIRCUS DB. We have been utilizing CIRCUS CS with four Docker-based CAD plug-ins. Conclusions We have successfully built a new version of the CIRCUS system. Our platform was successfully implemented at two clinical sites, and we plan to publish it as an open-source software project.

Gadolinium-ethoxybenzyl-diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (Gd-EOB-DTPA)-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tends to show higher diagnostic accuracy than other modalities. There is a demand for computer-assisted detection (CAD) software for Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI. Segmentation with high accuracy is important for CAD software. We propose a liver segmentation method for Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI that is based on a four-dimensional (4D) fully convolutional residual network (FC-ResNet). The aims of this study are to determine the best combination of an input image and output image in our proposed method and to compare our proposed method with the previous rule-based segmentation method. We prepared a five-phase image set and a hepatobiliary phase image set as the input image sets to determine the best input image set. We also prepared a labeled liver image and labeled liver and labeled body trunk images as the output image sets to determine the best output image set. In addition, we optimized the hyperparameters of our proposed model. We used 30 cases to train our model, 10 cases to determine the hyperparameters of our model, and 20 cases to evaluate our model. Our network with the five-phase image set and the output image set of labeled liver and labeled body trunk images showed the highest accuracy. Our proposed method showed higher accuracy than the previous rule-based segmentation method. The Dice coefficient of the liver region was 0.944 ± 0.018. Our proposed 4D FC-ResNet showed satisfactory performance for liver segmentation as preprocessing in CAD software.

A novel image feature set named histogram of triangular paths in graph (HoTPiG) is presented. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed HoTPiG feature set through two clinical computer-aided detection tasks: nodule detection in lung CT images and aneurysm detection in head MR angiography images. The HoTPiG feature set is calculated from an undirected graph structure derived from a binarized volume. The features are derived from a 3-D histogram in which each bin represents a triplet of shortest path distances between the target node and all possible node pairs near the target node. First, the vessel structure is extracted from CT/MR volumes. Then, a graph structure is extracted using an 18-neighbor rule. Using this graph, a HoTPiG feature vector is calculated at every foreground voxel. After explicit feature mapping with an exponential-χ2 kernel, each voxel is judged by a linear support vector machine classifier. The proposed method was evaluated using 300 CT and 300 MR datasets. The proposed method successfully detected lung nodules and cerebral aneurysms. The sensitivity was about 80% when the number of false positives was three per case for both applications. The HoTPiG image feature set was presented, and its high general versatility was shown through two medical lesion detection applications.

The three-dimensional (3D) voxel labeling of lesions requires significant radiologists' effort in the development of computer-aided detection software. To reduce the time required for the 3D voxel labeling, we aimed to develop a generalized semiautomatic segmentation method based on deep learning via a data augmentation-based domain generalization framework. In this study, we investigated whether a generalized semiautomatic segmentation model trained using two types of lesion can segment previously unseen types of lesion.We targeted lung nodules in chest CT images, liver lesions in hepatobiliary-phase images of Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MR imaging, and brain metastases in contrast-enhanced MR images. For each lesion, the 32 × 32 × 32 isotropic volume of interest (VOI) around the center of gravity of the lesion was extracted. The VOI was input into a 3D U-Net model to define the label of the lesion. For each type of target lesion, we compared five types of data augmentation and two types of input data.For all considered target lesions, the highest dice coefficients among the training patterns were obtained when using a combination of the existing data augmentation-based domain generalization framework and random monochrome inversion and when using the resized VOI as the input image. The dice coefficients were 0.639 ± 0.124 for the lung nodules, 0.660 ± 0.137 for the liver lesions, and 0.727 ± 0.115 for the brain metastases.Our generalized semiautomatic segmentation model could label unseen three types of lesion with different contrasts from the surroundings. In addition, the resized VOI as the input image enables the adaptation to the various sizes of lesions even when the size distribution differed between the training set and the test set.

Radiologists interpret many medical images and clinical practice demands timely interpretation, resulting in a heavy workload. To reduce the workload, here we formulate and validate a method that can handle different types of medical image and can detect virtually all types of lesion in a medical image. For the first time, we show that two flow-based deep generative (FDG) models can predict the logarithm posterior probability in a semi-supervised approach. We adopt two FDG models in conjunction with Bayes’ theorem to predict the logarithm posterior probability that a medical image is normal. We trained one of the FDG models with normal images and the other FDG model with normal and non-normal images. We validated the method using two types of medical image: chest X-ray images (CXRs) and brain computed tomography images (BCTs). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for pneumonia-like opacities in CXRs was 0.839 on average, and for infarction in BCTs was 0.904. We formulated a method of predicting the logarithm posterior probability using two FDG models. We validated that the method can detect abnormal findings in CXRs and BCTs with both an acceptable performance for testing and a comparatively light workload for training.

A fully automatic multiatlas-based method for segmentation of the spine and pelvis in a torso CT volume is proposed. A novel landmark-guided diffeomorphic demons algorithm is used to register a given CT image to multiple atlas volumes. This algorithm can utilize both grayscale image information and given landmark coordinate information optimally. The segmentation has four steps. Firstly, 170 bony landmarks are detected in the given volume. Using these landmark positions, an atlas selection procedure is performed to reduce the computational cost of the following registration. Then the chosen atlas volumes are registered to the given CT image. Finally, voxelwise label voting is performed to determine the final segmentation result. The proposed method was evaluated using 50 torso CT datasets as well as the public SpineWeb dataset. As a result, a mean distance error of $$0.59\pm 0.14\hbox { mm}$$ and a mean Dice coefficient of $$0.90\pm 0.02$$ were achieved for the whole spine and the pelvic bones, which are competitive with other state-of-the-art methods. From the experimental results, the usefulness of the proposed segmentation method was validated.