Computer-aided thyroid nodule detection in ultrasound images

Abstract

Nodular thyroid disease is a frequent occurrence in clinical practice and it is associated with increased risk of thyroid cancer and hyperfunction. In this paper we propose a novel method for computer-aided detection of thyroid nodules in ultrasound (US) images. The proposed method is based on a level-set image segmentation approach that takes into account the inhomogeneity of the US images. This novel method was experimentally evaluated using US images acquired from 35 patients. The results show that the proposed method achieves more accurate delineation of the thyroid nodules in the US images and faster convergence than other relevant methods.