(The Eurographics Association, 2017) Löber, Patrick; Stimpel, Bernhard; Syben, Christopher; Maier, Andreas; Ditt, Hendrik; Schramm, Peter; Raczkowski, Boy; Kemmling, André; Stefan Bruckner and Anja Hennemuth and Bernhard Kainz and Ingrid Hotz and Dorit Merhof and Christian Rieder
In case of an ischemic stroke, identifying and removing blood clots is crucial for a successful recovery. We present a novel method to automatically detect vascular occlusion in non-enhanced computed tomography (NECT) images. Possible hyperdense thrombus candidates are extracted by thresholding and connected component clustering. A set of different features is computed to describe the objects, and a Random Forest classifier is applied to predict them. Thrombus classification yields 98.7% sensitivity with 6.7 false positives per volume, and 91.1% sensitivity with 2.7 false positives per volume. The classifier assigns a clot probability > = 90% for every thrombus with a volume larger than 100 mm3 or with a length above 23 mm, and can be used as a reliable method to detect blood clots.