Towards a clinical chest workstation

Finding similar images, or reference cases, is one way to aid a radiologist during daily clinical practice. Attracting his attention to possible sites of lesions is another one, and directly providing a diagnosis would be the most useful, but in most cases unattainable form of assistance. However, all of these types of support require a set of computer analysis methods that needs to be developed or adapted for each clinical problem. In this work I outline a set of methods for automatic analysis of standard chest radiographs. The focus is on texture analysis and the method is applied to mass chest screening for tuberculosis and to the detection interstitial disease. I discuss various ways to use this method in practice, as part of a clinical chest workstation and hint on the role of CBIR in such workstations.