Dynamic Chest Radiography Using a Flat Panel Detector
ーDevelopment of a dynamic imaging and computer-aided quantitative analysis systemー

Rie Tanaka
rie44@mhs.mp.kanazawa-u.ac.jp

Background

We investigated a new chest radiography technique by computer analysis using a dynamic FPD. We are presently testing the clinical effectiveness of this dynamic imaging technique for patient diagnosis at Kanazawa University Medical Hospital, in Japan.
Concept
Anatomical infomation＋Kinetic information	Detailed anatomical information

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Our Research

We have developed a procedure to quantitatively measure the respiratory dynamic information such as the shifting of the diaphragm, lung marking vectors, the degree of transparency change of X-rays taken of local lung regions, etc. However, with this being our first attempt using this method, we were unable to obtain evidence of clinical value in our analytical results. At present, we are continuing to examine the clinical practicality of this method.
Analysed Regions	Facility & Devices
Captured Images	Results
Captures the flow of blood vessels and the respiratory system’s diaphragm, lungs, and heart.	The distance from the lung apex to the diaphragm is measured automatically by computer. The results are shown in the graph below: （Healthy subjects）
�@ Explain the imaging procedure to patient. �A Position patient (Same as for conventional X-rays) �B Voice recorded instructions are provided to guide the patient to breathe slowly and deeply. A recorded message also notifies the patient when the imaging is complete. ※ Bold characters for the breathing phase will appear for the images.
Research Update
We are examining the possibility of providing new diagnostic information to the screening process by adding a dynamic feature to the conventionally obtained anatomical information. This dynamic respiratory information could easily be obtained by performing computer-aided quantitative analysis on the dynamic X-ray images obtained from a conventional X-ray room. Our results suggest that this method has potential use in both clinical and screening examinations in the future.
Target Diseases	Future.Application
・Chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) ・Lung cancer, etc	Capture the respiratory images, perform computer-aided quantitative analysis to obtain dynamic data and provide both the quantified dynamic data and static images to allow the physician to refer to both images sets as necessary when making the final diagnosis. It is our goal to develop our dynamic chest imaging and computer-aided diagnosis system that can assist the physician in the screening and diagnosis process of these respiratory-related diseases.