Abstract
Reference lines of brain computed tomography (CT) is orbitomeatal (OM) line that runs through the external canthus and the center of the external auditory meatus. However, because it is difficult to identify OM line on the scout image which is 2-dimensional X-ray image, OM line is usually set by radiological technologists subjectively. The purpose of our study is to propose a method which detects the scan angle and the scan range used on the scout images automatically. The algorithm in our proposed method is based on a two-dimensional post-processing that is the method of Hough transformation conversion for detecting the scan angle and the Cross-correlation technique for the scan range. Our proposed method was tested using the scout images of 30 clinical patients' data by visual evaluation of four radiological technologists. Four radiological technologists evaluated the results of the clinical cases and 28 cases (93%) of CT examinations with using our method were acceptable. We confirmed it has the potential to improve the consistency in scan planning of brain CT, because the proposed method detects almost accurately the scan angle and the scan range in clinical cases. In conclusion, it is possible to obtain reproducible slice level images.
