Segmentation of haustral folds and polyps on haustral folds in CT colonography using complementary geodesic distance transformation

Computer-aided detection (CAD) for CT colonography refers to a scheme that automatically detects polyps in CT images of colon. Current CAD schemes already have a relatively high sensitivity and a low false positive rate. However, misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis are still common to happen, mainly due to the existence of haustral folds (HFs). An innovative idea of segmenting semilunar HFs from the smooth colonic wall and then using different methods to detect polyps on HFs and those on the smooth colonic wall is proposed in this paper to reduce the false positives and false negatives caused by HFs. For the polyps on HFs, a novel segmentation method is specially developed based on complementary geodesic distance transformation (CGDT). The proposed method is tested on four different models and real CT data. The property of CGDT is proved and our method turns out to be effective for HF segmentation and polyp segmentation. The encouraging experimental results primarily show the feasibility of the proposed method and its potential to improve the detection performance of CAD schemes.