Brits unveil new imaging for lung cancer

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http://www.upi.com/HealthBusiness/view. ... 4854-2582r

OXFORD, England, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- Doctors at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom say they have a new way to use computer tomography to find early lung cancer.

The new method involves a process called Visual Moving Features to detect lung nodules in their very early stages with a high degree of accuracy.

VMF uses image analysis based on a representation of the structure constructed across a number of parallel image planes, the researchers explained.

The Oxford scientists said they tested their method on 12 clinical cases involving a total of 3,875 sectional images and 106 lung nodules.

They said the Oxford VMF method was able to pick up every lung nodule that a "skilled radiologist" was able to find but with "far fewer false-positive detections than competitive methods."

The British researchers noted that there was a need for the new method because, although CT technology with improved resolution allows earlier detection of abnormalities, the error rate had increased.

Previous attempts to solve this problem through computer-aided detection still resulted in low sensitivity and a high number of false positives, they said.

The researchers said that early detection of small lung nodules and tumors, or those less than 3 cm in size, increases survival in lung-cancer patients by 75 percent.