Computer-aided diagnosis(CAD) provides computer output as a "second opinion" in order to assist radiologists in the diagnosis of various diseases on medical images. Currently, a significant research effort is being devoted to the detection and characterization of lung nodules in thin-section computed tomography(CT) images, which represents one of the newest directions of CAD development in thoracic imaging. We describe in this article the current status of the development and evaluation of CAD schemes for the detection of lung nodules in thin-section CT. We found that current schemes for nodule detection appear to report many false positives, and, therefore, significant efforts are needed in order further to improve the performance levels of current CAD schemes for nodule detection in thin-section CT.

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