Efficient and effective ultrasound image analysis scheme for thyroid nodule detection

Abstract

Ultrasound imaging of thyroid gland provides the ability to acquire valuable information for medical diagnosis. This study presents a novel scheme for the analysis of longitudinal ultrasound images aiming at efficient and effective computer-aided detection of thyroid nodules. The proposed scheme involves two phases: a) application of a novel algorithm for the detection of the boundaries of the thyroid gland and b) detection of thyroid nodules via classification of Local Binary Pattern feature vectors extracted only from the area between the thyroid boundaries. Extensive experiments were performed on a set of B-mode thyroid ultrasound images. The results show that the proposed scheme is a faster and more accurate alternative for thyroid ultrasound image analysis than the conventional, exhaustive feature extraction and classification scheme. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.