| [ Summary ] |
Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) for computed tomographic colonography (CTC) automatically detects the locations of suspicious polyps in CTC. CAD has the potential to increase diagnostic performance in the detection of polyps at screening population. Non-cathartic fecal-tagging CTC is a technique for eliminating carhartic cleansing from the bowel preparation by tagging residual feces in the colon with a radiopaque oral contrast agent. Electronic cleansing (EC) is an emerging technique for removal of tagged fecal materials in CTC images, virtually cleansing the colon after image acquisition. Rapid technical developments have advanced CAD and EC substantially during the last several years, and CAD and EC are becoming the mainstream techniques that could bring CTC to prime time for screening of colorectal cancer. The latest CAD systems yield a high sensitivity in the detection of polyps as well as improve human readers' detection performance. The latest EC schemes can visualize the entire colonic mucosa even when it is covered by a large amount of residual fecal materials. After reviewing the current status of screening CTC, this article discusses the expected benefits of using CAD in the interpretation of CTC, the fundamental CAD scheme for the detection of polyps in CTC, its detection performance, the effect on the improvement of human performance, the pitfalls, the latest advances in EC for non-cathartic CTC, as well as the current and future challenges in CAD and EC. |