Identification of intestinal wall abnormalities and ischemia by modeling spatial uncertainty in computed tomography imaging findings

• An original work on automated identification of bowel ischemia is reported.
• The computerized detection can greatly assist surgeons in emergency medicine.
• Testing on clinical data shows the potential application of the proposed approach.

Intestinal abnormalities and ischemia are medical conditions in which inflammation and injury of the intestine are caused by inadequate blood supply. Acute ischemia of the small bowel can be life-threatening. Computed tomography (CT) is currently a gold standard for the diagnosis of acute intestinal ischemia in the emergency department. However, the assessment of the diagnostic performance of CT findings in the detection of intestinal abnormalities and ischemia has been a difficult task for both radiologists and surgeons. Little effort has been found in developing computerized systems for the automated identification of these types of complex gastrointestinal disorders. In this paper, a geostatistical mapping of spatial uncertainty in CT scans is introduced for medical image feature extraction, which can be effectively applied for diagnostic detection of intestinal abnormalities and ischemia from control patterns. Experimental results obtained from the analysis of clinical data suggest the usefulness of the proposed uncertainty mapping model.