See

discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289175806

Texture pattern based lung nodule detection

(TPLND) technique in CT images

Article in International Review on Computers and Software · January 2014

CITATIONS READS

3 127

3 authors, including:

Senthilkumar Krishnamurthy
Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology
11 PUBLICATIONS 24 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Human Facial Emotion Recognition through Automatic Clustering based Morphological

Segmentation and Shape/Orientation Features View project

Medical Image Processing View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Senthilkumar Krishnamurthy on 03 August 2016.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 International Review on Computers and Software (I.RE.CO.S.), Vol. 9, N. 3
ISSN 1828-6003 March 2014

Texture Pattern Based Lung Nodule Detection (TPLND)

Technique in CT Images

T. K. Senthil Kumar, Ganesh Narasimhan, R. Umamaheswari

Abstract – Lung cancer has become one of the leading causes of cancer related death in both
men as well as women which ranges for about 30% of cancer death occurring in the world.
Medical image analysis is a complex task in which a human expert makes extensive use of the
knowledge of anatomy and imaging techniques. Specially, the detection of the presence of lung
nodules is challenging problem from a computer vision point of view. The early detection of the
lung cancer can definitely improve the long term health of those people diagnosed with it.
Evaluation of the variation of cardiac size from month to month by taking serial chest images
remains crucial for the treatment of lung cancer. In this paper, we have proposed an efficient
method for detecting the presence of the lung nodule with the help of CT images. The proposed
method is carried out using three processes such as segmentation, classification and detection.
Here we utilized clustering for classifying the lung images as normal or abnormal image. These
methods helped to improve the early detection of the lung nodules. Our proposed method proved
to be a highly efficient method for the detection of lung nodule with high rate of accuracy.
Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved.

Keywords: Lung Node Detection (TPLND), Computed Tomography images (CT)

Nomenclature long-term health of those diagnosed with it. Methods that

allow early detection of lung cancer, such as the helical
Sp Seed point in the image low-dose CT (Computed Tomography) scan, x-ray, and
A z  Maximum area chosen
bronchoscopy, are of value in the identification of
incurable metastatic cancer, as well as small cancer that
D  a,b  Input image for segmentation can be cured by surgical resection and prevention of
H  a,b  Output image after segmentation widespread [6].
Diagnosing Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) is regarded
T’ Selected threshold value as a difficult task, even for specialists, as many forms of
a1 , a2 Acceleration constants the disease are rare and thus little experience exists. The
Ti Intensity threshold diagnosis of ILD is established from the interpretation of
hK Gray value of the central pixel several clinical parameters of the patient in addition to
radiological findings [7].
hN Value of its neighbor Lung nodules might indicate a lung cancer and their
N Total number of neighbors detection in the early stage improves the survival rate of
R Radius of the neighborhood patients. CT is considered to be the most accurate
VTP True positive value imaging modality for nodule detection [8]. There has
VFN False negative value been growing interest in the development of Computer-
Tomography (CT) as a tool for detecting lung cancer.
VFP False positive value Lung nodules can be classified into two categories solid
VTN True negative value nodules characterized by their high contrast and Ground-
Glass Opacity (GGO) nodules with faint contrast and
fuzzy margins [9].
I. Introduction Due to the fast and high technology progress in high
Lung cancer is the first most common cause of cancer resolution X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanners,
death in men and the second most common cause in multi-slice helical CT of the thorax is widely used to
women, according to the 2004 world health report of the evaluate numerous lung diseases.
World Health Organization (WHO) [1]-[30]. It causes To provide useful and reliable information, most such
1.3 million annual deaths worldwide in 2006. Early CAD methods need to identify the lung boundaries
detection of lung cancer can significantly improve the within the images, a preprocessing step known as lung

Manuscript received and revised February 2014, accepted March 2014 Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved

415
 T. K. Senthil Kumar, Ganesh Narasimhan, R. Umamaheswari
segmentation, before computer analysis can take place
[13].
The wavelet transform is a powerful tool. Unlike the
Fourier sinusoids, which provide a sharp frequency
characterization of a given signal but which are unable to
identify transient events, wavelets achieve a balance
between localization in space or time, and localization in
the frequency domain. As the discrete wavelet transform
corresponds to basis decomposition, it provides a non-
redundant and unique representation of the signal [5].
The theories of wavelets analyses improve day by day,
the wavelet has become a powerful mathematical tool
which widely used in signal processing, image
compression and enhancement, pattern recognition,
control systems, and other fields in the past two decades
[18]. The biorthogonal wavelets contain in particular
compactly supported bi-orthogonal spline wavelets with
compactly supported duals. In bi-orthogonal wavelets,
separate decomposition and reconstruction filters are
defined and hence the responsibilities of analysis and
synthesis are assigned to two different functions as
opposed to a single function in the orthonormal case
[16].
Spline wavelets stand apart in the general theory of
the wavelet transform. Their construction starts with the
specification of the underlying multi-resolution function
spaces (polynomial splines). Thus, spline wavelets can be
characterized explicitly; this is in contrast with most
other constructions where the scaling function is
specified indirectly via a two-scale relation. The main
advantage of an explicit construction is that one does not
have to worry about the delicate issues of the
convergence of the iterated filter bank. It also makes the
study of regularity much more transparent. The spline
wavelets are used for consistent output prediction in
wavelet domain as an algorithmic solution to the
classical least squares minimization problem. The
algorithm is computationally efficient and exhibits
excellent performance in cross validation. [17].
Some disadvantages of computerized nodule detection
are:
 The Opacity of nodules that are smaller than the slice
thickness is reduced to sub solid appearance by the
partial volume effect.
 Due to the partial volume effect it is impossible to set
a certain value as a threshold for potential nodules.
Rather, many different thresholds have to be tried and
false positives cannot be simply rejected because they
correspond to a low value.
 For thin vessels which may be appearing
disconnected when running obliquely through the
slice images and thus be mistaken for nodules [4].
Various types of approach were used for segmenting
the lung nodules. They are texture-based probabilistic
approach, which uses a classification-based approach
based on pixel-level texture features that produces soft
(probabilistic) segmentations [30]. The classifier is tested
on the publicly available Lung Image Database
Consortium (LIDC) dataset [20], Computer Aided
Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved
416
Diagnosis System, where the problem of developing an
automated system for detecting the presence of
pulmonary nodules in the lung CT is considered. Cancer
detection system is based on texture features extracted
from the slice of DICOM Lung CT images for the
identification of cancerous nodules [24], Robust Surface
Estimate, where an algorithm was developed to segment
solid pulmonary nodules attached to the chest wall in
computed tomography scans. The pleural surface was
estimated and used to segment the nodule from the chest
wall. To estimate the surface, a robust approach was used
to identify points that lie on the pleural surface, not on
the nodule [25].
Artificial Neural Network, where a Computer Aided
Diagnosis (CAD) system using Artificial Neural
Network (ANN) to classify the lung cancer present is
developed in order to detect and to classify the present of
lung cancer in an x-ray images [26].Lung Segmentation
Algorithm, which is quite important especially at lung
vessel segmentation, detection of pulmonary emboly,
finding nodules or segmentation of airways [21],
Computer-Aided Diagnosis, where it is used to improve
the diagnostic performance of radiologists in clinical
practice [19], Data Mining Technique, where a
framework for mapping image features to radiologist-
defined diagnostic criteria based on the newly available
data is presented. Using data mining, promising
mappings to clinically relevant, human-interpretable
nodule characteristics such as malignancy, margin,
speculation, subtlety, and texture can be done [14],
Efficient Visualization and Segmentation of Lung Ct
Scan, where different methods are used for efficient
visualization as well as automatically extracting the
organ regions from abdominal CT data especially from
lung that can be further used in various medical diagnosis
applications like CBMIR [15].
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section
II explains the researches that are related to our proposed
method. Section III shows our proposed method for
detection of lung nodules using segmentation,
classification and detection. Section IV explains the
result of the proposed methodology and finally SectionV
concludes our proposed method with suggestions for
future works.
II. Related Work
Numerous researches have been proposed by
researchers for lung nodule detection in the recent years.
In this section, a brief review of some important
contributions from the existing literature is presented.
HU et al. [1] have proposed a fully automatic method
for identifying the lungs in three dimensional (3-D)
pulmonary X-ray CT images. The method has three main
steps. First, the lung region was extracted from the CT
images by gray-level thresholding. Then, the left and
right lungs were separated by identifying the anterior and
posterior junctions by dynamic programming. Finally, a
sequence of morphological operations was used to
International Review on Computers and Software, Vol. 9, N. 3
 T. K. Senthil Kumar, Ganesh Narasimhan, R. Umamaheswari
smooth the irregular boundary along the mediastinum in
order to obtain results consistent with those obtained by
manual analysis, in which only the most central
pulmonary arteries were excluded from the lung region.
The method have been tested by processing 3-D CT
data sets from eight normal subjects, each imaged three
times at biweekly intervals with lungs at 90% vital
capacity. Averaged over all volumes, the root mean
square difference between the computer and human
analysis is 0.8 pixels (0.54 mm). The mean intrasubject
change in tissue content over the three scans was 2.75%
2.29% (mean standard deviation).
Park et al. [2] have proposed a method to apply the
general image retrieval algorithm on chest radiographs
using quasi-Gabor filter. The lung field was extracted to
limit the region to be processed using knowledge based
lung field extraction method and the rib shadow was
reduced to emphasis the lung texture. They extracted the
lung field from the input radiograph and reduced the rib
shadow. They divided the lung field into N 64x64
overlapping by 48 pixels subimages. They extracted the
image feature vectors from each subimage and classified
them to identify the image as a normal texture class or as
an abnormal class using k-nn classifier. The lung texture
database consisted of 2 classes and each class contains 20
normal lung textures and 20 abnormal lung textures.
Y. Shi et al. [3] have proposed a new deformable
model using both population based and patient-specific
shape statistics to segment lung fields from serial chest
radiographs. First, a modified scale-invariant feature
transform (SIFT) local descriptor was used to
characterize the image features in the vicinity of each
pixel, so that the deformable model deforms in a way that
seeks for the region with similar SIFT local descriptors.
Second, the deformable model was constrained by
both population-based and patient-specified shape
statistics. Initially, population-based shape statistics takes
most of the rules when the number of serial images was
small; gradually, patient-specific shape statistics takes
more rules after a sufficient number of segmentation
results on the same patient have been obtained. For the
initial time-point images, the population-based shape
statistics plays the major rule for statistically constraining
the deformable contours. The proposed deformable
model can adapt to the shape variability of different
patients, and obtain more robust and accurate
segmentation results. Moltz et al. [10] have proposed an
advanced algorithm for segmenting lung nodules, liver
metastases, and enlarged lymph nodes in CT scans.
Segmentation and volumetry were essential tasks of a
software assistant for oncological therapy monitoring.
The method was based on a hybrid algorithm originally
developed for lung nodules that combines a threshold-
based process with model-based morphological
processing. They proposed an extension that deal with
particular challenges of each lesion type: lung nodules
that were attached to non-convex parts of the pleura, rim-
enhancing and peripheral liver metastases and lymph
nodes with an extensive contact to structures of similar
Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved
417
density. They evaluated their methods on several
hundred lesions in clinical datasets and the quality of
segmentations was rated by radiologists.
Anitha S. and Sridhar S. [12] have proposed a method
to develop a segmentation system in order to assist the
surgeons to remove the portion of lung for the treatment
of certain illness such as lung cancer, and tumours. The
fissures of lung lobes were not seen by naked eyes in low
dose CT image, there was a proposal for automatic
segmentation system.
The lung lobes and nodules in CT image were
segmented using two stage approaches such as modified
adaptive fissure sweep and adaptive thresholding.
Initially pre-processing was used to remove the noise
present in CT image using filter, then the fissure regions
were located using adaptive fissure sweep technique,
then histogram equalization and region growing was
applied to refine the oblique fissure. Lung Nodules were
segmented using thresholding. The comparative analysis
of manual and automatic segmentation for fissure
verification has been performed statistically.
Udeshani et al. [22] have proposed an approach to
detect lung cancer from raw chest X-ray images. At the
first stage, they used a pipeline of image processing
routines to remove noise and segment the lung from
other anatomical structures in the chest X-ray and extract
regions that exhibit shape characteristics of lung nodules.
Subsequently, first and second order statistical texture
features were considered as the inputs to train a neural
network to verify whether a region extracted in the first
stage is a nodule or not. The proposed method detected
nodules in the diseased area of the lung with an accuracy
of 96% using the pixel-based technique while the
feature-based technique produced an accuracy of 88%.
The system integrates a graphical user interface where
the user was able to select a digital chest X-ray image as
the input and the system will show suspected regions of
the image that contain lung nodules. H. S. Pheng et al.
[23] compared the performance of various conventional
and computational intelligence algorithms in the
segmentation, detection and quantification of lung
nodules on CT lung images. The accuracy of lung region
segmentation was found important as a preprocessing
step to identify the lung nodules. By mean of these
computerized systems, the detection and measurement of
lung nodules can assist the radiologists to determine
whether the lung nodules were benign or malignant.
They were focused on existing intelligence
computational algorithms for segmentation of CT lung
images and quantification lung nodules. They introduced
the publicly datasets released by Lung Image Database
Consortium (LIDC) and Image Database Resource
Initiative (IDRI).
III. Proposed Methodology for the
Detection and Classification
of Lung Nodules
Lung cancer is the first most common cause of cancer
International Review on Computers and Software, Vol. 9, N. 3
 T. K. Senthil Kumar, Ganesh Narasimhan, R. Umamaheswari
death in men, and the second most common cause in
women, according to the 2004 world health report of the
World Health Organization (WHO). There has been
growing interest in the development of various
technologies for the detection of the lung nodules.
Early detection of the lung nodule can effectively help
in curing the disease which increased the need for
developing new technologies for detection of the lung
nodule. Lung nodules can be classified into two
categories: solid nodules characterized by their high
contrast and Ground-Glass Opacity (GGO) nodules with
faint contrast and fuzzy margins. However the detection
of the lung nodule has proved to be a complex process in
the medical arena.
Our proposed method proved to be efficient in the
detection of the lung nodule. Our detection process takes
place through a number of steps like segmentation,
detection and classification. The first process in our
method is segmentation where the lung images are
segmented using region growing method. Next is the
detection process which is done with the help of the
feature extraction using LBP.
Once the detection is completed the final step is the
classification of the images as normal and abnormal
images. The flow diagram for our proposed method is
given in Fig. 1(a).
Fig. 1(a). Proposed method of lung nodule detection
III.1. Image Segmentation
Segmentation is defined as the partitioning of an
image into different sets of pixels. It is basically used to
identify the objects or boundaries in an image [29]. The
result of the segmentation is a set of segments that
usually cover the entire area of the image. Generally
segmentation is the method that elucidates spatially close
parts in the images as an object. The region represents
the spacial closeness and so they are important step in the
segmentation process.
Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved
418
Segmentation approach is equivalent to pattern
recognition process. In this proposed method we have
utilized the method of Region growing for segmentation
of the images.
III.1.1. Nodule Segmentation Using
Region Growing Technique
Region growing is a simple image segmentation
method based on the region [28]. It is also classified as a
pixel-based image segmentation method since it involves
the selection of initial seed points. This approach to
segmentation examines the neighbouring pixels of initial
“seed points” and determines whether the pixel
neighbours should be added to the region or not based on
certain conditions.
The process is iterated to yield different regions. In a
normal region growing technique, the neighbour pixels
are examined by only the "intensity" constrain. For this, a
threshold level for intensity value is set and those
neighbour pixels that satisfy this threshold is selected for
region growing. The region growing is a process which
uses the size of the particular growth as the seed point. In
our proposed technique each of the nodules is treated
separately to which the region growing technique is
applied. The initial step in region growing for the nodule
formed is to select a seed point. The initial region begins
as the exact location of the seed. Here we have carried
out histogram analysis to find out the seed point.
In our proposed the seed point is selected based on the
maximum area present in the lung image. Let the image
be p . The seed point helps to segment the lungs by
growing the particular area:
S p  max A  z  (1)
where:
S p is the seed point in the image.
A  z  is the maximum area chosen.
After finding out the seed point, the region is grown
from it. Here the neighbouring pixels are compared with
the seed point and if the neighbour pixel satisfies
constrains, then the region is grown else it is not grown
to that pixel. Constrains for our proposed region growing
is the “intensity”. For the intensity constraint, an
intensity threshold is also set in-order to check if the
neighbour pixel satisfies the condition. Intensity
threshold defines the maximum value by the neighbour
pixel value can differ from the pixel in consideration.
Suppose the pixel is having the intensity value I m ,
and the neighbouring pixel has the value I k and the
intensity threshold is set as Ti , then if | | I m  I k || Ti ,
then intensity constrain is met and satisfied.
When the intensity constraint is satisfied by a
neighbouring pixel, then the region is grown to the
neighbour pixel and the region grows. That is
International Review on Computers and Software, Vol. 9, N. 3
 T. K. Senthil Kumar, Ganesh Narasimhan, R. Umamaheswari
if | I m  I k || Ti then the neighbour pixel is added to the
region. For every nodules, the region is grown and based
on these regions features are extracted.
III.1.2. Selection of Nodule Points Using
Gray Threshold Method
Basically, threshold is one of the most commonly used
methods for image segmentation process. Threshold is
used for discriminating foreground image from the
background. In the thresholding process, based on the
particular threshold value being selected, the pixels in the
image are marked as the object pixel if the value of the
pixel is greater than the selected threshold value. If the
pixel value is lesser than threshold value, then those
pixels are marked as background pixels. In our proposed
method the threshold value is selected based on the size
of the nodules in the image. Thresholding is an effective
method for image segmentation when the image consists
of a large number of similar objects for selecting the
proper nodules. By choosing a suitable threshold
between the dominant intensities of the background and
object, the original image can be partitioned into regions
where the solid nodules alone are separated from the
other image parts. The image is segmented into the
object and background pixels as per the expression given
below. For each pixel (a, b):
1 for D  a,b   T
H  a,b   
0 for D  a,b   T
where D  a,b  is the input image for segmentation,
H  a,b  is the output image after segmentation and T is
the selected threshold value. The nodules which possess
the value above the threshold value will be chosen as the
nodule point for further processing. After the process the
original image and the segmented image are compared.
The gray threshold helps to level the images which
further help in separating the lungs region from the other
outer regions in the CT image. Once the lung region is
separated from the image the next process is to find the
tumor region in the lungs. For this purpose we carried out
the morphological operations.
III.1.3. Morphological Operation
After Segmentation of the image I by adjusting the
contrast and intensity of the image using threshold
segmentation and then morphological operation is
performed on the image. Morphological operations are
affecting the form, structure or shape of an object. They
are used in pre or post processing or for getting a
representation or description of the shape of
objects/regions. A set of functions that are valuable for
processing and decomposition of shapes in arbitrary
dimensions is provided by the mathematical morphology.
Set-theoretic operations like union and intersection are
Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved
used to define morphological operations. The two inputs
given to morphological operation are binary image and
structuring element. After adjusting the contrast and
intensity of the image I , the image is converted to the
binary form I b . Then, by applying Eqs. (3), (4) and (5)
an enhanced image is obtained through the
morphological operations like imdilate, imclose and
imopen that utilizes the structuring element S .
Dilation: The dilation of image by a flat structuring
element S at any location (x, y) is defined as the
maximum value of the image in the window:
 Ib  S   x, y   max Ib  x  a, y  c  (3)
where a,c  S .
Opening: The opening of the image Ib by structuring
element S is defined as the erosion of Ib by S followed by
a dilation of the result with S:
 Ib  S    Ib S   S (4)
Closing: The closing of the image Ib by structuring
element S is defined as the erosion of Ib by S followed by
a dilation of the result with S:
 Ib  S    Ib  S  S (5)
(2) The above expressions are used for calculating the
morphological function. By using these morphological
operation maximum intensity pixels of the image alone is
selected. Thus, the operation employed contrast and
intensity adjusted image is further enhanced by utilizing
the morphological operation. Once the morphological
operation is completed, the image properties are
calculated for tumor identification. Once the
morphological operation in completed the various image
properties are found. The image properties are calculated
using the Regionprobs method where the area of the
particular nodule is found out along with the mean. The
area calculation helps in classifying the nodules based on
its size and these can further help in identifying the
tumor nodule from the non-tumor nodules. Once the area
of the nodules is calculated the morphological operation
is again applied in order to select the required nodules.
The nodules above the level 3x3 are selected as the
nodules for identifying the tumor.
Normally the nodule which is in circular shape is
identified and selected for classification. Again the gray
thresholding process is applied in order to select the
exact nodule part from the lung CT image to a higher
accuracy. Next the feature extraction process is carried
out for the identification of tumor cells.
III.2. Texture Based Nodule Classification
Usually detection is the process of extracting the
information from any data. Here the detection is
International Review on Computers and Software, Vol. 9, N. 3
419
 T. K. Senthil Kumar, Ganesh Narasimhan, R. Umamaheswari
performed in lung image in order to detect whether there
is a presence of nodule. The detection is carried out with
the help of feature extraction using LBP. The input
image that has undergone morphological operation is
then splitted into number of grids for which the LBP is
applied with the aim to calculate the frequency relating to
the maximum intensity. The LBP operation is explained
in detail below.
III.2.1. Local Binary Pattern
The local spatial structure of the image texture are
characterized by a gray-scale texture operator called
Local Binary Pattern (LBP). LBP indicates a magnitude
relation between a center pixel and its neighboring pixels
in a micro pattern. Given a central pixel in the image, a
pattern code is computed by comparing its value with
those of its neighborhoods using the expression given
below:
N 1

LBPN ,R ai ,b j    F  hN  hK  2 N
N 0
where hK is the gray value of the central pixel, hN is the
value of its neighbor, N is the total number of neighbors
involved and R is the radius of the neighborhood. The
Eq. (6) means that the differences in the neighborhood
are derived as N bit binary number that results in
2 N distinct value for the LBP code. The texture can thus
be described as 2 N discrete distribution given by:
 
Tr  t LBPN ,R ai ,b j 
For calculating the LBP feature vector for a given
image of size P x Q, the central part alone is considered
since large neighborhood cannot be used on the borders.
The LBP code is calculated for each pixel in the image
and the distribution of the LBP code is used as a feature
vector which is expressed as given below:
R  t  LBPN ,R  a,b  
a   S  ,.....,P  1   S 
b   S  ,.....,Q  1   S 
Binary: 00111001
Decimal: 57
Fig. 1(b). LBP code represented as kernel structure index
Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved
The LBP code may be represented as kernel structure
index which can be represented as in Fig. 1(b).
III.2.2. Classification
As per the above kernel the pixels values are being
identified and the corresponding decimal values are
found out. The value range that is selected in our
proposed method is (0.0420-0.0525). Those nodules
between these ranges are classified as tumor nodule and
remaining as non-tumor nodules. The nodules feature
values are taken such that the exact tumor nodule can be
extracted out using our method. Along with the LBP
feature values, in our proposed method we have also
extracted the mean value of the nodules as well.
The mean value helps in obtaining those nodules that
can form the tumor in the lungs. The LBP feature
extraction methods generate the feature descriptor
information for each of these target nodules which are
then compared with the LBP feature descriptors for
various training of data nodule and non-nodule classes.
(6) The non-nodule are discarded and no longer seen as
target lung nodules. Sensitivity and specificity is
computed to obtain the detection results with more
accuracy.
IV. Result and Discussion
The proposed Lung nodule detection is implemented
in the working platform of MATLAB (version 7.12.0).
The detection process is tested with frames of
different images and the obtained result of the proposed
work has been shown below. Initially, the images are
(7) segmented and then features are extracted followed by
the classification process.
Figs. 2 show the processing of our proposed method
CT images to detect tumor nodules.
Fig. 2(a) is the input CT scan images for the lungs.
The Fig. 2(b) is the image obtained after the region
growing process. Fig. 2(c) is the image obtained
eliminating the outer region.
Fig. 2(d) is the image obtained after thresholding
operation and Fig. 2(e) is the image which contain the
lung region alone after separating the outer regions. Fig.
2(f) is the possible nodule point selection and Fig. 2(g) is
(8) the possible region of interest.
International Review on Computers and Software, Vol. 9, N. 3
420
 T. K. Senthil Kumar, Ganesh Narasimhan, R. Umamaheswari

(a) Input images

(b)After region
growing

(c)Neglect outer region

(d)Thresholding

(e) Outer layer removal

(f)Possible nodule
points

Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved International Review on Computers and Software, Vol. 9, N. 3

421
 T. K. Senthil Kumar, Ganesh Narasimhan, R. Umamaheswari

(g)Region
identification

(h)Analyzing region 1

(i)Analyzing region 2

(j)Analyzing region 3

(k) Output Nodule 1

(l) Output Nodule 2

Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved International Review on Computers and Software, Vol. 9, N. 3

422
 T. K. Senthil Kumar, Ganesh Narasimhan, R. Umamaheswari

(m) Output Nodule 3

(n) Output Tumor

nodule

(o) Marked tumor

Figs. 2. Tumor detection in CT lungs Image

Figs. 2(h), (i), (l) are the analyzing regions in the
lungs for nodule identification and Figs. 2(k), (l), (m) are
the output nodules that are extracted based on the
features.
The Fig. 2(n) is the final classified tumor nodule from
the lungs and Fig. 2(o) is the marked tumor image
output. Hence by our proposed method we have obtained
better classification and detection of the nodules in an
efficient manner. The feature values are calculated for
the different images and the Table I shows the texture,
mean, standard deviation and entropy values obtained for
different input images in our proposed method. The
graphical representation of these feature values obtained
from our proposed method is shown in Fig. 3. Along
with this image feature values, the size parameters of the
cancerous nodules are also extracted. The various image
parameters obtained are Area, Eccentricity, Perimeter
and solidity. These values help in identifying the
different nodules which can be cancerous type. The
parameters values obtained are given in the below table.
The graphical representation of the size parameters of
the cancerous nodules is given in Fig. 4 .

TABLE I
FEATURE VALUES OBTAINED IN PROPOSED METHOD.
Input Images Texture Mean Standard Deviation Entropy
Image 1 0.0424 0.6573 1.1368 4.6878
Image 2 0.0485 0.7288 1.342 4.3818
Image 3 0.0441 0.3944 0.8978 4.1819
Image 4 0.0521 0.5144 0.9779 4.3581
Image 5 0.0479 0.2216 0.5706 3.4109
Image 6 0.0451 0.3807 0.7229 4.6969

TABLE II
SIZE PARAMETERS OF CANCEROUS NODULES
Input images Area Perimeter Eccentricity Solidity Orientation
Image 1 128 41.7990 0.6797 0.9343 78.1954
Image 2 98 36.3848 0.5892 0.9423 63.0021
Image 3 95 35.1562 0.5545 0.9122 48.8574
Image 4 92 38.1421 0.7957 0.8846 28.6151
Image 5 41 22.1421 0.7146 0.9535 71.6011
Image 6 80 32.1421 0.7820 0.9756 5.9962

Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved International Review on Computers and Software, Vol. 9, N. 3

423
 T. K. Senthil Kumar, Ganesh Narasimhan, R. Umamaheswari

Fig. 3. Graphical Representation of Various Image feature values

Fig. 4. Graphical representation of Size parameters of the Cancerous Nodules

V. Performance Evaluation false negative value (i.e.) the number of abnormal

The performance evaluation of our proposed
methodology is calculated by measuring the accuracy,
sensitivity and specificity of the method.
The accuracy of our proposed method proved to be
more efficient than the existing works. These factors
proved to be more improved than the previous work used
in Texture feature extraction based on a uniformity
estimation method for local brightness and structure in
chest CT images [27].
The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy values are
calculated using the expression given below:
VTP
Sensitivity 
VTP  VFN
VTN
Specificity 
VFP  VTN
regions that are incorrectly classified as normal regions,
VFP is the false positive value (i.e.) the number of
normal regions that are incorrectly classified as abnormal
regions and VTN is the true negative value of the image
(i.e.) the number of normal regions that are correctly
classified. The percentage values of sensitivity,
specificity and accuracy are calculated. The average
recognition rate obtained in our proposed method has
better exceeded when compared with these existing
method. Table III given below shows the recognition rate
obtained from our proposed method and the existing
method.
(9) TABLE III
ACCURACY, SPECIFICITY AND SENSITIVITY MEASURE
FOR PROPOSED AND EXISTING METHODS
Method Accuracy (%) Specificity (%) Sensitivity (%)
Proposed method 83.33 83.33 83.33
(10)
Existing method 81.80 64.80 78.80

From the table it is clear that our proposed method

VTP  VTN
Accuracy  (11) delivers better measures of Accuracy, Specificity and
VTP  VFN  VFP  VTN Sensitivity than the existing method. The corresponding
graphical representation of the recognition rate is shown
where VTP is the true positive value (i.e.) the number of in the Fig. 5. The results proves that our proposed
abnormal regions that are correctly classified, VFN is the method of Lung nodule detection is efficient in
classifying the correct affected images.

Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved International Review on Computers and Software, Vol. 9, N. 3

424
 T. K. Senthil Kumar, Ganesh Narasimhan, R. Umamaheswari
Fig. 5. Graphical representation of Accuracy, Specificity and Sensitivity measure for Proposed and Existing methods
VI. Conclusion
In this paper, we have proposed an efficient method
for detecting the presence of the lung nodule with the
help of CT images. The proposed method is carried out
using three processes such as segmentation, classification
and detection. Here we utilized clustering for classifying
the lung nodules as normal or abnormal one. The
clustering process provided better classification of the
images which resulted in detecting the affected portion in
the lungs exactly as tumor nodes. These methods helped
to improve the early detection of the lung nodules. Our
proposed method proved to be a highly efficient method
for the detection of lung nodule with high rate of
accuracy.
References
[1] Shiying Hu, Eric A. Hoffman and Joseph M. Reinhardt,
"Automatic Lung Segmentation for Accurate Quantitation of
Volumetric X-Ray CT Images," IEEE Transactions On Medical
Imaging, Vol. 20, No. 6,pp.490-498, Jun 2001.
[2] Mira Park, Jesse S. Jin and Laurence S. Wilson, "Detection of
Abnormal Texture in Chest X-rays with Reduction of Ribs," In
Proc.of. Pan-Sydney Area Workshop on Visual Information
Processing ,Vol.36, Sydney, Australia, 2004.
[3] Yonghong Shi, Feihu Qi, ZhongXue, Kyoko Ito,Hidenori Matsuo,
and Dinggang Shen, "Segmenting Lung Fields in Serial Chest
Radiographs Using Both Population and Patient Specific Shape
Statistics," IEEE Transaction on Medical Imaging, Vol.4,No.27,
pp. 83-91, 2006.
[4] Korfiatis Panayiotis, "Automated Lung Nodule Detection In Low
Dose Multislice CT," University Of Patras, Patras ,2006.
[5] Dimitri Van De Ville,ThierryBlu and Michael Unser, "Surfing the
Brain: An Overview of Wavelet-Based Techniques for fMRI Data
Analysis," IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine,
Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 65-78,2006.
[6] YuanjieZheng,Karl Steiner, Thomas Bauer, JingyiYu,Dinggang
Shen and Chandra Kambhamettu, "Lung Nodule Growth Analysis
from 3D CT Data with a Coupled Segmentation and Registration
Framework," , In.proc.of.11th IEEE International Conference on
Computer Vision,pp.1-8, Rio de Janeiro , 2007.
[7] Adrien Depeursinge, Daniel Sage, AsmaaHidki, Alexandra
Platon, Pierre AlexandrePoletti, Michael Unser and Henning
Muller, "Lung Tissue Classification Using Wavelet Frames," ,
In.proc.of. 29th Annual International Conference of the IEEE on
Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, pp.6259 -
6262,Lyon , 2007.
Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved
425
[8] Martin Dolejsi, "Detection of Pulmonary Nodules from CT
Scans," Research Reports of CMP, Czech Technical University in
Prague, No. 5, 2007.
[9] Xujiong Ye, Xinyu Lin, JamshidDehmeshki, Greg Slabaugh and
Gareth Beddoe, "Shape Based Computer-Aided Detection of
Lung Nodules in Thoracic CT Images," , IEEE Transaction
Biomedical Engineering,Vol.56, No.7, pp.1810-1820, Jul 2008.
[10] Jan Hendrik Moltz, Lars Bornemann, Jan-Martin Kuhnigk, Volker
Dicken, Elena Peitgen, Stephan Meier, Hendrik Bolte, Michael
Fabel, Hans-Christian Bauknecht, Markus Hittinger, Andreas
Kiebling,MichaelPusken, and Heinz-Otto Peitgen, "Advanced
Segmentation Techniques for Lung Nodules, Liver Metastases,
and Enlarged Lymph Nodes in CT Scans," IEEE Journal Of
Selected Topics In Signal Processing, Vol. 3, No. 1,pp.122-134,
Feb 2009.
[11] Noah Lee, Andrew F. Laine,GuillermoMárquez,Jeffrey M.
Levsky and John K. Gohagan, "Potential of Computer-Aided
Diagnosis to Improve CT Lung Cancer Screening," In.proc.of.
IEEE Reviews In Biomedical Engineering, Vol. 2,pp.136-146,
2009.
[12] Anitha. S and Sridhar.S, "Segmentation Of Lung Lobes And
Nodules In CT Images,"An International Journal of Signal &
Image Processing(SIPIJ) ,Vol.1, No.1,pp.1-12, Sep 2010.
[13] Fernando C. Monteiro, "Region-Based Clustering for Lung
Segmentation in Low-Dose CT Images,"In.proc.of.International
Conference of Numerical Analysis and Applied
Mathematics,Vol.3,pp. 2061-2064,Sep 2010.
[14] Aswini Kumar Mohanty and Dr.Saroj Kumar Lenka, "Data
Mining Technique to Interpret Lung Nodule for Computer Aided
Diagnosis, "International Journal of Computer and
Communication Technology,Vol.1,No.2,pp.373-378, 2010.
[15] Preeti Aggarwal, H.K. Sardana and RenuVig, "An Efficient
Visualization And Segmentation Of Lung Ct Scan Images For
Early Diagnosis Of Cancer, "In.proc.of.National Conference on
Computational Instrumentation ,Chandigarh, India, Mar 2010.
[16] Loganathan. R and Y.S.Kumaraswamy, "Medical Image
Compression Using Biorthogonal Spline Wavelet With Different
Decomposition, "International Journal on Computer Science and
Engineering, Vol. 2, No. 9,pp.3003-3006, 2010.
[17] S. Mukhopadhyay, U. Mahapatra, A.K. Tangirala and A.P.
Tiwari, "Spline Wavelets for System Identification,"In.Proc. of
the 9th International Symposium on Dynamics and Control of
Process Systems (DYCOPS), Leuven, Belgium, Jul 2010.
[18] X. Huang and X. Lu, "The Use of Fractional B-Splines Wavelets
in Multiterms Fractional Ordinary Differential Equations,"
International Journal of Differential Equations,Vol. 2010,
pp.113,2010.
[19] Jin Mo Goo, "A Computer-Aided Diagnosis for Evaluating Lung
Nodules on Chest CT: the Current Status and Perspective,"
Korean journal of radiology ,Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 145-155, Apr
2011.
[20] Olga Zinoveva, DmitriyZinovev, Stephen A. Siena, Daniela S.
International Review on Computers and Software, Vol. 9, N. 3
 T. K. Senthil Kumar, Ganesh Narasimhan, R. Umamaheswari

Raicu, Jacob Furst and Samuel G. Armato, "A texture-based Dr. Ganesh Narasimhan received P.hD degree
probabilistic approach for lung nodule segmentation," In.Proc.of in the field of Nanoelectronics – Quantum dots
the 8th international conference on Image analysis and and cellular automata from JNTU Hyderabad
recognition ,Heidelberg ,2011. and Master of technology from IIT Madras in
[21] H. Ozkan, O. Osman, S. Sahin, M. M. Atasoy, H. Barutca, A. F. Microelectronics and VLSI Design. He has
Boz and A. Olsun, "Lung Segmentation Algorithm for CAD published 24 International journals with high
System in CTA Images,"In.Proc.of World Academy of Science, impact factors and presented over 30
Engineering and Technology, No.77,2011. International conferences. He received the
[22] K.A.G. Udeshani, R.G.N. Meegama and T.G.I. Fernando, GOLD medal for his Ph.D thesis. He has over 18 years of teaching
"Statistical Feature-based Neural Network Approach for the experience and working presently as Principal of Vel Tech (R.S)
Detection of Lung Cancer in Chest X-Ray Images," International Engineering College, Chennai, India under Anna University. His
Journal of Image Processing (IJIP), Vol.5, No.4,pp.425- research interests are Nano Electronics, VLSI, Digital Signal/Image
434,2011. Processing, Low Power Embedded and VLSI design.
[23] H. S. Pheng, S. M. Shamsuddin, and S. Kenji,"Application of
Intelligent Computational Models on Computed Tomography Dr. R. Umamaheswari (Rengasamy
Lung Images," International Journal of Advances in Soft Umamaheswari) received the B.E. degree from
Computing and Applications, Vol. 3, No. 2,pp.1-15, Jul 2011. Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, India in
[24] Disha Sharma and Gagandeep Jindal, "Computer Aided Diagnosis 1999, the M.E. degree from P.S.G. College of
System for Detection of Lung Cancer in CT Scan Images," Technology, Coimbatore , India in 2002, and
International Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering, the Ph.D. degree from Indian Institute of
Vol. 3, No. 5, pp.714-718,Oct 2011. Technology Madras, India in 2011. She is
[25] Artit C. Jirapatnakul, Yury D. Mulman,Anthony P. Reeves,David currently working as Professor in Department of
F. Yankelevitz and Claudia I. Henschke, "Segmentation of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Rajalakshmi Engineering
Juxtapleural Pulmonary Nodules Using a Robust Surface College, Anna University, Chennai. Her research interests are Industrial
Estimate," International Journal of Biomedical Imaging, Vol. Electronics and Automation, Signal Processing Applications and High
2011,Jan 2011. Voltage Technology. She is active member of IEEE and life member of
[26] AzianAzamimi Abdullah and SyamimiMardiahShaharum, "Lung ISTE.
Cancer Cell Classification Method Using Artificial Neural
Network," Information Engineering Letters, Vol. 2, No. 1,pp.49-
58, 2011.
[27] Shao-Hu Peng ,Deok-HwanKim ,n, Seok-LyongLee and Myung-
KwanLim,"Texture feature extraction based on a uniformity
estimation method for local brightness and structure in chest
CTimages",Computers inBiologyandMedicine ,Vol.40, pp.931–
942, 2010.
[28] W. K. Pratt, “Digital Image Processing” 4th Edition, John Wiley
& Sons, Inc., Los Altos, California, 2007.
[29] Y. A. Alsultanny, Region Growing and Segmentation Based on
by 2D Wavelet Transform to the Color Images, (2008)
International Review on Computers and Software (IRECOS), 3
(3), pp. 315 - 323.
[30] T. Boudghene Stambouli, A. Ouamri, M. Keche, Textured Images
Classification Using Nearest Feature Line Method Added with
Kurtosis and Skewness, (2008) International Review on
Computers and Software (IRECOS), 3 (6), pp. 593 - 596.

Authors’ information
T. K. Senthil Kumar (Triplicane
Krishnamurthy Senthil Kumar) obtained his
Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics
Engineering from Bhajrang Engineering
College, Anna University. Then he obtained his
Master’s degree in Applied Electronics from
College of Engineering Guindy, Anna
University and currently pursuing PhD in an
area of Medical Image Processing. He is an Assistant Professor in the
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering at
Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology,Chennai, India. His specializations
include Signals and Systems, Control Systems, Digital Signal
Processing and Digital Image Processing. His current research interests
are Radiographic medical image feature extraction/ segmentation and
classification, 1-D Medical Signal Analysis and Implementation of
1D/2D signal algorithms in VLSI.

Copyright © 2014 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved International Review on Computers and Software, Vol. 9, N. 3

426

View publication stats