Quantitative assessment of emphysema from whole lung CT scans: Comparison with visual grading

Brad M. Keller, Anthony P. Reeves, Tatiyana V. Apanasovich, Jianwei Wang, David F. Yankelevitz, Claudia I. Henschke

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Emphysema is a disease of the lungs that destroys the alveolar air sacs and induces long-term respiratory dysfunction. CT scans allow for imaging of the anatomical basis of emphysema and for visual assessment by radiologists of the extent present in the lungs. Several measures have been introduced for the quantification of the extent of disease directly from CT data in order to add to the qualitative assessments made by radiologists. In this paper we compare emphysema index, mean lung density, histogram percentiles, and the fractal dimension to visual grade in order to evaluate the predictability of radiologist visual scoring of emphysema from low-dose CT scans through quantitative scores, in order to determine which measures can be useful as surrogates for visual assessment. All measures were computed over nine divisions of the lung field (whole lung, individual lungs, and upper/middle/lower thirds of each lung) for each of 148 low-dose, whole lung scans. In addition, a visual grade of each section was also given by an expert radiologist. One-way ANOVA and multinomial logistic regression were used to determine the ability of the measures to predict visual grade from quantitative score. We found that all measures were able to distinguish between normal and severe grades (p<0.01), and between mild/moderate and all other grades (p<0.05). However, no measure was able to distinguish between mild and moderate cases. Approximately 65% prediction accuracy was achieved from using quantitative score to predict visual grade, with 73% if mild and moderate cases are considered as a single class.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationMedical Imaging 2009
Subtitle of host publicationComputer-Aided Diagnosis
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009
Externally publishedYes
EventMedical Imaging 2009: Computer-Aided Diagnosis - Lake Buena Vista, FL, United States
Duration: 10 Feb 200912 Feb 2009

Publication series

NameProgress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE
Volume7260
ISSN (Print)1605-7422

Conference

ConferenceMedical Imaging 2009: Computer-Aided Diagnosis
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityLake Buena Vista, FL
Period10/02/0912/02/09

Keywords

  • COPD
  • CT
  • Computer aided diagnosis
  • Emphysema
  • Lung disease
  • Visual score

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Quantitative assessment of emphysema from whole lung CT scans: Comparison with visual grading'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this