Prof.
Roberto Bellotti
(Università di Bari and INFN)
Lung cancer accounts for the most common cause of cancer-related deaths in
the United States with some 160000 deaths, i.e. around 28% of all cancer
deaths, expected in 2009.
Low-dose X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) is a reliable tool in
terms of lung cancer early diagnosis: the
radiation dose for a screening session is smaller than that of clinical CT
scans and lung nodules smaller in diameter are more likely to be diagnosed.
As a matter of fact, large scale screening programs based on lung CT scans are time
consuming: each case report takes from 30 minutes to 1 hour. However, when
assisted by Computer Aided Detection (CAD) systems, radiologists
have been shown to perform with a better efficiency in terms of both sensitivity
and time
saving.
We present the CAD systems for lung nodule detection in chest CT scans
developed in the framework of the Medical Applications on a Grid
Infrastructure Connection (MAGIC-5) Project, granted by the italian
National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN). The project started as a spin-off of
high energy physics software development and involves a community of
researchers in constant contact with - some of them also involved in -
Astroparticle and High Energy Physics experiments.
The MAGIC-5 CAD systems consist of several pattern recognition
modules, based on statistical and adaptive algorithms:
i) lung parenchyma segmentation;
ii) detection of nodule candidates;
iii) feature extraction;
vi) false positive reduction;
v) classification of nodule candidates.
The systems were tested on CT scans from three different databases:
Italung CT
Trial database (20 CTs); ANODE09 competition (5 CTs); LIDC database (83
CTs).
The most relevant results, as well as the prospects, will be
presented and discussed.
Institution
Università di Bari and INFN
Last Name
E-mail address
roberto.bellotti@ba.infn.it
Please submit a short bio (max 1500 characters)
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
1999-present: Associate Professor of Experimental Physics - University of Bari, Italy
1992-1999: Researcher of Physics - University of Bari, Italy
1990-1991: Fellow, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Italy
MAIN ACTIVITIES:
1) 1988-present: Research in Experimental Astroparticle Physics: MACRO Experiment at Gran Sasso Laboratory, WiZard Balloon-borne experiment, PAMELA satellite experiment.
2) 1997-present: Research in Medical Physics.
3) 2003-present: Coordinator of the Bari Unit of the MAGIC-5 (Medical Applications on a Grid Infrastructure Connection) experiment, granted by INFN.
4) 2006-2007: Head of the italian project “Study and development of physical-computational systems for distributed analysis in biomedical images”.
Address
Via Amendola 173 - 70126 Bari - Italy
First Name(s)
Telephone
Prof.
Roberto Bellotti
(Università di Bari and INFN)
