Candidate determination for computer aided detection of colon polyps

Given a segmented CT scan data of the colon represented as a triangle mesh, our water-plane algorithm will detect polyp candidates. The water-plane method comprises of pouring water into a polyp protrusion from the outside of the colon and in raising the “water-plane” until it cannot be incremented any further without causing water leakage. The method starts at a vertex and uses average normal of all triangles adjacent to the starting vertex to generate the initial water-plane, which will make the starting vertex “wet” but leave its neighboring vertices “dry”. The method will continue to wet neighboring vertices one by one and then their neighbors and so on until the water-plane cannot move any further without causing water leakage. The water-plane movement alternates between just raising the water level in completely convex regions and tilting about one or two anchor vertices that have neighbors that would get wet if the water level was raised any more. The final set of wet vertices is a cluster that is an initial polyp candidate. The water-plane method was compared against the current polyp candidate detection method in our Computer Aided Detection of Colon Polyps software pipeline, called the surface curvature method. It finds clusters of connected vertices that all exhibit elliptical curvature. The water-plane method showed multiple improvements in polyp candidate detection. It detected polyp candidates missed by the surface curvature method. It exhibited continuous polyp candidate regions instead of non-uniform or incomplete regions detected by the surface curvature method. And finally, it avoided some false positive detections reported by surface curvature method.