Segmentation and Visualization of the Lungs in Three Dimensions Using 3D Region Growing and Visualization Toolkit in CT Examinations of the Chest

摘要

Computed tomography (CT) stands out among the exams used by computer-aided diagnosis in medical imaging as it provides the visualization of internal organs such as the lungs and their structures. This paper focuses on the segmentation of lungs using a three-dimensional region growing (3D RG) method and the registration toolkit ITK library. To evaluate the proposed segmentation method, we used 30 exams from a dataset built in previous work with different types of images and diagnosis. The results were compared against two segmentation tools from OsiriX software, one by toolbox and the other by plugin MIA, and a third, by a medical specialist, which was considered as the gold standard. The results are given in a three-dimensional model with the VTK library and show that the lung segmentation, based on the 3D RG method presented here, produce an average segmentation correctness of 98.75%. Therefore, this method could be part of a computer-aided medical diagnosis system in Pulmonology.