Computer-aided detection of colorectal lesions for cathartic-free CT colonography

Cathartic bowel preparation is a major barrier in implementing clinically feasible colorectal screening programs. We developed a fully automated computer-aided detection (CAD) scheme for a cathartic-free computed tomographic colonography (CTC) examination. In a pilot evaluation with 46 clinical cathartic-free CTC cases, the proposed scheme detected 100% (4/4) of large ges10 mm lesions with 3.7 false-positive (FP) detections per patient (per two volumetric CT scans) and 90% (9/10) of ges6 mm lesions with 5.0 FP detections per patient, on average. The results indicate that CAD can be used to detect clinically significant lesions with high accuracy in cathartic-free CTC examinations.