A voxel-based neural approach (VBNA) to identify lung nodules in the ANODE09 study

The computer-aided detection (CAD) system we applied on the ANODE09 dataset is devoted to identify pulmonary nodules in low-dose and thin-slice computed tomography (CT) images: we developed two different systems for internal (CADI) and juxtapleural nodules (CADJP) in the framework of the italian MAGIC-5 collaboration. The basic modules of CADI subsystem are: a 3D dot-enhancement algorithm for nodule candidate identification and an original approach, we referred as Voxel-Based Neural Approach (VBNA), to reduce the amount of false-positive findings based on a neural classifier working at the voxel level. To detect juxtapleural nodules we developed the CADJP subsystem based on a procedure enhancing regions where many pleura surface normals intersect, followed by a VBNA classification. We present both the FROC curves we obtained on the 5 annotated ANODE09 example dataset, and on all the ANODE09 50 test cases.