Database Matches Disease CT Scans.

• Position: Brief Article

Engineers at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., have teamed up with medical experts to develop a computerized system designed to aid in disease diagnosis by matching a patient's CT scans with images in a large database of scans from previous patients. Because the images have been selected by highly trained physicians, the system can be used by less-skilled or less-specialized medical personnel as a tool for diagnosing patients, indicates Carla Brodley, assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who is leading the research. She stresses that the system is not intended to replace the human element in diagnosis, but to improve the accuracy and speed of diagnosis by completing comprehensive image comparisons within seconds.

Sophisticated software enables the user to carry out a visual sort of keyword search, a method referred to as content-based image retrieval. The system views a patient's medical scan and then searches for visually similar images in a database containing hundreds of CT scans that have been selected carefully by medical experts. The pre-selected scans represent known examples...