Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Liver Tumors on Computed Tomography Images

Highlights • A computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system was proposed to diagnose liver cancer using the features of tumors obtained from multiphase CT images. • Three kinds of features were extracted for each tumor, including 3-D texture feature (GLCM), 3-D shape (compactness and elliptic model), and kinetic curve characteristics (maximum enhancement, time to peak, uptake rate, and washout rate). • This study compared the performances of each combination of different feature sets. Combining all of the features achieved the highest accuracy (58/71, 81.69%), sensitivity (18/22, 81.82%), and specificity (40/49, 81.63%). The Az value of combining all features was 0.8713. • Combining texture, shape, and kinetic curve features may be able to differentiate benign from malignant tumors in the liver using our proposed CAD system.