Multicentric environment for medical image processing algorithms assessment

Abstract

Constantly, a variety of new image processing methods are presented to the community. However, few of them have proved to be useful when used in clinical routine. The task of analyzing and comparing different algorithms, methods and applications through a sound testing is an essential qualification of algorithm design. However, it is usually very difficult to compare the performance and adequacy of different algorithms in the same way. The main reason is due to the difficulty to assess exhaustively the software, or at least using a comprehensive and diverse number of clinical cases for comparison. Several areas such as software development, image processing and medical training need a diverse and comprehensive dataset of images and related information. Such datasets could be used to develop, test and evaluate new medical software, using public data. This project proposal is an action plan to make available of a free, online, multipurpose and multimodality medical image database environment. We are looking for an environment, implemented such as a distributed medical image database, which stores medical images, reports, image processing softwares, gold standards and post-processed images. Also, this environment implements a peer review model which assures the quality of all datasets. The development of this project proposal will allow to continue Marcelo dos Santos doctoral work and also it seeks to consolidate knowledge and results already acquired. From these results it is intended to offer means to make comprehensive assessments and comparisons with other approaches. (AU)