Detection of Rib Borders on X-ray Chest Radiographs

Abstract

The purpose of the research herein presented is the automatic detection of the rib borders in posterior-anterior (PA) digital chest radiographs. In a computer-aided diagnosis system, the precise location of the ribs is important as it allows reducing the false positive in the detection of abnormalities such as nodules, rib lesions and lung lesions. We adopted an edge based approach aiming at detecting the lower border of each rib. For this purpose, the rib geometric model is described as a parabola. For each rib, the upper limit is obtained using the position of the corresponding lower border. © Springer-Verlag 2004.