Advances of imaging technology in lung cancer screening

Lung cancer has a high incidence rate. In the early stage, the lesion usually manifests as small nodules radiologically, and no symptoms clinically. Chest X-ray is the most simple, commonly means of screening, but with a low sensitivity and specificity in detecting small lung nodules. Digital tomosynthesis has advantages of high spacial resolution and relatively low-radiation dose compared to CT, it largely improves the ability in detecting small nodules compared to conventional radiography. Compared to CT, low-dose CT is considered to be the first line of tool in screening. Dual-energy subtraction can simultaneously obtain both soft tissue and bony images, and can increase the detection rate. Bone suppression based on neural network learning can improve the detection rate of early lung cancer without additional radiation dose and additional equipment. (authors)