Abstract
In this paper, a software system for pattern recognition of chest X-ray films is presented. This system called AISCR-V 2 (Automatic Interpretation System of Chest Roentgenograms-Version 2) is able to recognize borders of heart, thorax and ribs, to detect some kinds of abnormal shadows in the lung due to lung cancer, pulmonary tuberculosis etc. and to extract features of heart shadows in chest photofluorograms. AISCR-V 2 consists of four subsystems : Subsystem 0 (Sampling and quantization), Subsystem I (Recognition of borders of heart and thorax, extraction of features concerning heart and aorta etc. and diagnosis of heart disease), Subsystem II (Recognition of borders of rib images), and Subsystem III (Detection of abnormal shadows in lung). The outline of AISCR-V 2 is first introduced briefly. Then, the procedure of image process&ing in each subsystem is presented. Finally, some results of application of the system to chest photofluorograms taken in mass screening are shown. These results are promising as the first step of automatic diagnosis of chest X-ray films and very interesting as the example of pattern recognition of extremely complex images.
