GREENBELT,
MD — NASA software used to enhance Earth science imagery could help
interpret medical imagery. The new MED-SEG system, developed by Bartron
Medical Imaging Inc. of Largo, Md., relies on an innovative software
program developed at NASA to help doctors analyze mammograms,
ultrasounds, digital X-rays and other medical imaging tests.
“The use of this computer-based technology could minimize human error
that occurs when evaluating radiologic films and might allow for
earlier detection of abnormalities within the tissues being imaged,”
said Dr. Thomas Rutherford, director of Gynecologic Oncology at Yale
University in New Haven, Conn.
The Food and Drug
Administration recently cleared the system for trained professionals to
process images. These images can be used in radiologists’ reports and
communications, but the processed images should not be used for primary
diagnosis.
MED-SEG is a software device that receives
medical images and data from various medical imaging sources. Images
and data can be stored, communicated, processed and displayed within
the system or across computer networks at distributed locations.
The core of Bartron’s MED-SEG system is a computer algorithm, the
Hierarchical Segmentation Software, developed at NASA’s Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., by computer engineer James C. Tilton.
He began working on his algorithm more than 25 years ago.
His goal was to advance a totally new approach for analyzing digital
images, which are made up of thousands of pixels. Like a single piece
of a jigsaw puzzle, a pixel often does not provide enough information
about where it fits in the overall scene. To overcome the deficiency,
Tilton focused on an approach called image segmentation, which
organizes and groups an image’s pixels together at different levels of
detail. Tilton’s approach to image segmentation is different than
others. It finds region objects, and also groups spatially separated
region objects together into region classes.
For example,
an Earth satellite image may contain several lakes of different depths.
Deep lakes appear dark blue, and shallow lakes are a lighter shade of
blue. The software first finds each individual lake; then it groups
together all shallow lakes into one class and the deeper lakes into
another. Because lakes are more similar than they are to vegetation,
roads, buildings, and other objects, the software groups all lakes
together, regardless of their varying colors. As a result, the software
allows the user to distinguish important features in the scene
accurately and quickly.
Bartron learned of the software
through Goddard’s Innovative Partnerships Program Office. In 2003 the
company licensed the patented technology to create a system that would
differentiate hard-to-see details in complex medical images.
“Trained professionals can use the MED-SEG system to separate
two-dimensional images into digitally related sections or regions that,
after colorization, can be individually labeled by the user,” explained
Fitz Walker, president and CEO of Bartron Medical Imaging.
Dr. Molly Brewer, a professor with the Division of Gynecologic Oncology
at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, would
like to do clinical trials with the MED-SEG system to improve
mammography as a diagnostic tool for detecting breast cancer.
“One problem with mammograms is they often give a false negative for
detecting abnormalities in women’s breasts,” Brewer said. “Women who
either have high breast density or a strong family history of breast
cancer are often sent for MRIs, which are costly, very uncomfortable
and have a high false positive rate resulting in many unnecessary
biopsies. The MED-SEG processes the image allowing a doctor to see a
lot more detail in a more quantitative way. This new software could
save patients a lot of money by reducing the number of costly and
unnecessary tests.”
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