Computer-aided diagnosis system for lung nodules based on computed tomography using shape analysis, a genetic algorithm, and SVM

Lung cancer is the major cause of death among patients with cancer worldwide. This work is intended to develop a methodology for the diagnosis of lung nodules using images from the Image Database Consortium and Image Database Resource Initiative (LIDC-IDRI). The proposed methodology uses image processing and pattern recognition techniques. To differentiate the patterns of malignant and benign forms, we used a Minkowski functional, distance measures, representation of the vector of points measures, triangulation measures, and Feret diameters. Finally, we applied a genetic algorithm to select the best model and a support vector machine for classification. In the test stage, we applied the proposed methodology to 1405 (394 malignant and 1011 benign) nodules from the LIDC-IDRI database. The proposed methodology shows promising results for diagnosis of malignant and benign forms, achieving accuracy of 93.19 %, sensitivity of 92.75 %, and specificity of 93.33 %. The results are promising and demonstrate a good rate of correct detections using the shape features. Because early detection allows faster therapeutic intervention, and thus a more favorable prognosis for the patient, herein we propose a methodology that contributes to the area.