Numerous publications and commercial systems are available that deal with automatic detection of pulmonary nodules in thoracic computed tomography scans, but a comparative study where many systems are applied to the same data set has not yet been performed. This paper introduces ANODE09 (http://anode09.isi.uu.nl), a database of 55 scans from a lung cancer screening program and a web-based framework for objective evaluation of nodule detection algorithms. Any team can upload results to facilitate benchmarking. The performance of six algorithms for which results are available are compared; five from academic groups and one commercially available system. A method to combine the output of multiple systems is proposed. Results show a substantial performance difference between algorithms, and demonstrate that combining the output of algorithms leads to marked performance improvements.
Comparing and combining algorithms for computer-aided detection of pulmonary nodules in computed tomography scans: the ANODE09 study
B. van Ginneken, S. Armato, B. de Hoop, S. van de Vorst, T. Duindam, M. Niemeijer, K. Murphy, A. Schilham, A. Retico, M. Fantacci, N. Camarlinghi, F. Bagagli, I. Gori, T. Hara, H. Fujita, G. Gargano, R. Belloti, F. Carlo, R. Megna, S. Tangaro, L. Bolanos, P. Cerello, S. Cheran, E. Torres and M. Prokop
Medical Image Analysis 2010;14:707-722.