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Lung Segmentation on HRCT and Volumetric CT for Diffuse Interstitial Lung Disease Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

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Abstract

A robust lung segmentation method using a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) was developed and evaluated on high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) and volumetric CT of various types of diffuse interstitial lung disease (DILD). Chest CT images of 617 patients with various types of DILD, including cryptogenic organizing pneumonia (COP), usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP), and nonspecific interstitial pneumonia (NSIP), were scanned using HRCT (1–2-mm slices, 5–10-mm intervals) and volumetric CT (sub-millimeter thickness without intervals). Each scan was segmented using a conventional image processing method and then manually corrected by an expert thoracic radiologist to create gold standards. The lung regions in the HRCT images were then segmented using a two-dimensional U-Net architecture with the deep CNN, using separate training, validation, and test sets. In addition, 30 independent volumetric CT images of UIP patients were used to further evaluate the model. The segmentation results for both conventional and deep-learning methods were compared quantitatively with the gold standards using four accuracy metrics: the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), Jaccard similarity coefficient (JSC), mean surface distance (MSD), and Hausdorff surface distance (HSD). The mean and standard deviation values of those metrics for the HRCT images were 98.84 ± 0.55%, 97.79 ± 1.07%, 0.27 ± 0.18 mm, and 25.47 ± 13.63 mm, respectively. Our deep-learning method showed significantly better segmentation performance (p < 0.001), and its segmentation accuracies for volumetric CT were similar to those for HRCT. We have developed an accurate and robust U-Net-based DILD lung segmentation method that can be used for patients scanned with different clinical protocols, including HRCT and volumetric CT.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Industrial Strategic technology development program (10072064) funded by the Ministry of Trade Industry and Energy (MI, Korea) and by Kakao and Kakao Brain corporations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Convergence Medicine and Radiology, Asan Medical Institute of Convergence Science and Technology, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Beomhee Park & Heejun Park

  2. Department of Radiology, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Sang Min Lee & Joon Beom Seo

  3. Department of Convergence Medicine and Radiology, Research Institute of Radiology and Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Namkug Kim

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  1. Beomhee Park
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  2. Heejun Park
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  3. Sang Min Lee
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  4. Joon Beom Seo
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  5. Namkug Kim
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Correspondence to Namkug Kim.

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Park, B., Park, H., Lee, S.M. et al. Lung Segmentation on HRCT and Volumetric CT for Diffuse Interstitial Lung Disease Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks. J Digit Imaging 32, 1019–1026 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-019-00254-8

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