Lung vessel enhancement in low-dose CT scans: The LANCELOT method

Abstract

To reduce the patient’s radiation exposure from computed tomography scans (CT), low-dose CT scans can be recorded. Several image processing methods exist to segment or enhance the lung blood vessels from contrast-enhanced or high resolution CT scans, but the reduced contrast in low-dose CT scans leads to over- or under-segmentation. Our LANCELOT method combines maximum response and stick filters to enhance lung blood vessels in native, low-dose CT scans. We compare our method with the vessel segmentation and enhancing methods from Frangi and Sato et al. Our method has two advantages that were confirmed in an evaluation with two clinical experts: First, our method enhances small vessels and vessel branches more clearly and second, it connects vessels anatomically correct, while the others create discontinuities.