Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide, mainly due to late diagnosis. Early detection can significantly improve survival rates, but in the Netherlands and many other European countries, there is no national lung cancer screening program yet. Therefore, early-stage lung cancer is often incidentally discovered in clinical CT scans. Detecting small lung nodules in these scans is challenging due to the high workload of radiologists. This dissertation demonstrates that the number of CT scans and detected lung nodules, as well as early-stage lung cancer, have significantly increased over the past decade. This underscores the importance of detecting lung nodules, but also sustainable healthcare. Research showed that artificial intelligence (AI) is promising and can accurately detect lung nodules compared to experienced radiologists. Subsequent research revealed that AI is also capable of detecting rare cancers in the airways, which are often overlooked by radiologists.
Ward Hendrix (1994) obtained his Master’s degree in Integrated Product Design (medisign specialization), cum laude, at the Delft University of Technology in 2019. Afterwards he started his PhD research at the Jeroen Bosch Hospital and Diagnostic Image Analysis Group (DIAG) of Radboudumc.