Equivalence between chest X-ray and High Resolution Computed Tomography (HRCT) exams

Abstract

The Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the most important specie of mycobacteria in public health. It is estimated that one death every 10 seconds, is attributed to tuberculosis (TB), totaling annually about 2 million deaths globally. Since 1993, the World Health Organization (WHO) considers TB as a global emergency. TB can cause pleural effusion, atelectasis, pulmonary condensation and even after effective treatment, TB let sequel such as fibrosis and emphysema affecting the quality of life of patients. Assessments of lung areas, described above, are usually made subjectively by experts in the field of radiology for X-ray examinations and / or high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT). However subjective evaluation may indicate variations for the same observer and between different observers. The accurate quantification of fibrosis and pulmonary emphysema areas is very importante to assess the sequels of specific treatments for specific diseases. The aim of this research is the quantification of fibrosis and emphysema, present in lung areas in different examinations (X-ray and HRCT). If quantification between the two tests do not show significant variations, it is possible to estimate the consequences of TB examinations in conventional X-rays. This may result in changes in protocols procedures adopted to verify the sequelae of the disease (commonly request HRCT scans), taking to dose optimization and risk for the patient, since the X-ray examination will result in lower dosage for the patient. The student will use an algorithm in order to perform the quantification of fibrosis and emphysema in patients with pulmonary TB and / or pleural. Further, this research proposal is to develop an algorithm in MATLAB® to determine the equivalence of quantification of sequelae (fibrosis and emphysema) between retrospective HRCT and X-rays exams.