ANÁLISE TEMPORAL DE NÓDULOS E MASSAS PULMONARES UTILIZANDO ÍNDICES DE SIMILARIDADE

Abstract

With the advent of imaging methods, the pulmonary nodule is becoming the most common manifestation of lung cancer and one of the most lethal of all cancers. Geometry (shape) and texture (tissue) measurements analyzed over time can be used to search the nodule malignancy. Among geometric measures commonly used, the nodule growth rate is one of the most accurate noninvasive methods to evaluate malignancy. Followed by other texture measures achieved over time, it is possible to get valuable information about nodules behavior, so that the doctor can use them to take related decisions. For these reasons, it is important to compare the nodule in exams applied at different moments. A key step for the comparison is to verify the correspondence between nodules of different exams. This correspondence is used to determine if a nodule X in the exam A is the same nodule Y in an exam B. Due to a number of anatomical and physiological factors and image acquisition, the same nodule cannot be in exactly the same location on different exams. To correct this problem, rigid and deformable image registration show up to be efficient. Once established this correspondence, it is possible to analyze the nodule texture changes through similarity indexes. In this sense, the aim of this work is to present methods for quantitative analysis of texture changes in lung nodules. For this analysis, it is used CT scans obtained at different moments from the same patient. Furthermore, it is presented a method to verify nodules found in different exams correspond to the same nodule by applying image registration.