A hybrid multi-scale model for thyroid nodule boundary detection on ultrasound images

Authors:
S. Tsantis;N. Dimitropoulos;D. Cavouras;G. Nikiforidis
Affiliations:
Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, University of Patras, Rio Patras 26500, Greece;Medical Imaging Department, EUROMEDICA Medical Center, 2 Mesogeion Avenue, Athens, Greece;Department of Medical Instrumentation Technology, Technological Educational Institution of Athens, Ag. Spyridonos Street, Egaleo GR-122 10, Athens, Greece;Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, University of Patras, Rio Patras 26500, Greece
Venue:
Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine
Year:
2006

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Abstract

A hybrid model for thyroid nodule boundary detection on ultrasound images is introduced. The segmentation model combines the advantages of the ''a trous'' wavelet transform to detect sharp gray-level variations and the efficiency of the Hough transform to discriminate the region of interest within an environment with excessive structural noise. The proposed method comprise three major steps: a wavelet edge detection procedure for speckle reduction and edge map estimation, based on local maxima representation. Subsequently, a multiscale structure model is utilised in order to acquire a contour representation by means of local maxima chaining with similar attributes to form significant structures. Finally, the Hough transform is employed with 'a priori' knowledge related to the nodule's shape in order to distinguish the nodule's contour from adjacent structures. The comparative study between our automatic method and manual delineations demonstrated that the boundaries extracted by the hybrid model are closely correlated with that of the physicians. The proposed hybrid method can be of value to thyroid nodules' shape-based classification and as an educational tool for inexperienced radiologists.