Human Airway Measurement from CT Images

摘要

A wide range of pulmonary diseases, including common ones such as COPD, affect the airways. If the dimensions of airway can be measured with high confidence, the clinicians will be able to better diagnose diseases as well as monitor progression and response to treatment. In this paper, we introduce a method to assess the airway dimensions from CT scans, including the airway segments that are not oriented axially. First, the airway lumen is segmented and skeletonized, and subsequently each airway segment is identified. We then represent each airway segment using a segment-centric generalized cylinder model and assess airway lumen diameter (LD) and wall thickness (WT) for each segment by determining inner and outer wall boundaries. The method was evaluated on 14 healthy patients from a Weill Cornell database who had two scans within a 2 month interval. The corresponding airway segments were located in two scans and measured using the automated method. The total number of segments identified in both scans was 131. When 131 segments were considered altogether, the average absolute change over two scans was 0.31 mm for LD and 0.12 mm for WT, with 95% limits of agreement of [-0.85, 0.83] for LD and [-0.32, 0.26] for WT. The results were also analyzed on per-patient basis, and the average absolute change was 0.19 mm for LD and 0.05 mm for WT. 95% limits of agreement for per-patient changes were [-0.57, 0.47] for LD and [-0.16, 0.10] for WT.