Imaging-based clusters in former smokers of the COPD cohort associate with clinical characteristics: the SubPopulations and intermediate outcome measures in COPD study (SPIROMICS)

摘要

BackgroundQuantitative computed tomographic (QCT) imaging-based metrics enable to quantify smoking induced disease alterations and to identify imaging-based clusters for current smokers. We aimed to derive clinically meaningful sub-groups of former smokers using dimensional reduction and clustering methods to develop a new way of COPD phenotyping.