Automated Discovery of Meniscal Tears on MR Imaging: A Novel,High-Performance, Computer-Aided Detection Application for Radiologists

摘要

Knee-related injuries including meniscal tears are common in both young athletes and the aging population and require accurate diagnosis and surgical intervention when appropriate. With proper techniques and radiologists' experienced skills, confidence in detection of meniscal tears can be quite high. However, for radiologists without musculoskeletal training, diagnosis of meniscal tears can be challenging. This paper develops a novel computer-aided detection (CAD) diagnostic system for automatic detection of meniscal tears in the knee. Evaluation of this CAD system using an archived database of images from 40 individuals with suspected knee injuries indicates that the sensitivity and specificity of the proposed CAD system are 83.87% and 75.19%, respectively, compared to the mean sensitivity and specificity of 77.41% and 81.39%, respectively obtained by experienced radiologists in routine diagnosis without using the CAD. The experimental results suggest that the developed CAD system has great potential and promise in automatic detection of both simple and complex meniscal tears of knees.