Patent · US Expired

Mass detection in digital radiologic images using a two stage classifier

US5768333A · kind A · utility

69Cited by
7References
20Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateDec 2, 1996
Grant dateJun 16, 1998
Priority date
Expiry dateDec 2, 2016

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06T7/0012
  • WIPO fieldMedical technology
  • WIPO sectorInstruments

Abstract

A computer-implemented method of identifying suspect masses in digital radiologic images and a system for computer-aided diagnosis of such images in which the images are thresholded at a large number of threshold levels to discriminate spots and a two stage classifier is applied to the spots. The first classification stage applies multiple rules predetermined from a training set of images, to a relatively computationally inexpensive set of initial features, namely area, compactness, eccentricity, contrast, and intensity variance for each spot. More computationally expensive features, namely edge orientation distribution and texture features, are computed only for spots that are accepted by the first classification stage to points for these spots in an expanded feature space. In the second classification stage, these points are classified as true positives or false positives in dependence on which mean of a plurality of clusters of true positives and a plurality of clusters of false positives, predetermined from the training set, is nearest in Mahalanobis distance.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.