Wednesday 18 December 2013

Prof invents software to detect lung cancer

KANPUR: A faculty member of the department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj University has invented a Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD) tool (software) for easy and quick identification of nodules in the chest that causes cancer. Siemens Information Systems Pvt Ltd, which had offered three-month internship to assistant professor Sandesh Gupta for developing the technology got US patent. This technology will help the radiologists in easy identification of the cancerous lumps (nodules) in the lung X-Ray of a patient.

Gupta said, "In India, a radiologist examines 200-300 chest X-Rays which leads to higher chances of human error due to workload. A CAD related tool can work as a secondary radiologist which may assist a radiologist to identify lumps in a radiograph with much higher accuracy. The radiologist is also able to detect exact ailment of the patient, who underwent X-Ray earlier. Thus, lung radiographs identifying lumps after the removal of ribs from lung X-Ray image will go a long way in solving the complications faced by both the radiologist and the patient."

Ideally, a skilled radiographer may manually pick out lumps, but to speed up the diagnostic procedure, CAD techniques are increasingly used. After the development of CAD, there arose a need for automatic method to detect lumps in the chest X-Ray, which gave birth to this new invention, he said.

The present invention relates to Computer Aided Diagnosis and particularly, to imaging the lung, specifically to identify blood vessels. "Thus, detection of vessels in chest X-Ray based on edge detection method has been evolved," he added.
  The chest X-Ray is typically the first imaging test used to help diagnose causes of symptoms such as shortness of breath, fever, persistent cough, chest pain etc. Its application helps in diagnosing and monitoring treatment for medical conditions such as pneumonia, lung cancer (chest X-Rays are used to detect lumps for early detection of cancer), heart failure and other heart problems.

Gupta said that the blood vessels while crosses each other appear like a nodule. Then it becomes difficult for a radiologist to identify whether it is an actual nodule or not. 
 The new invention removes the image of the blood vessels from the X-ray and it could be known exactly whether there is any nodule or not. This eases the job of the radiologists and also the patient will be benefitted as his/her treatment will begin on a right note.

There are five components of chest X-ray, namely ribs, ribs shadow, blood vessels, lung mass and the nodules (lymphs). Images of the other four are removed from X-ray to locate a lymph.

He said: "The technology has been patented by Siemens Information Systems Pvt Ltd and I am one of the inventors of the CAD technology." CSJMU vice-chancellor Ashok Kumar had congratulated Gupta. "University promotes such research initiatives and inventions," Kumar said.


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