F. Preteux et al., Modeling, segmentation, and caliber estimation of bronchi in high resolution computerized tomography, J ELECTR IM, 8(1), 1999, pp. 36-45
Accurate estimation of bronchial caliber in high resolution computerized to
mography (HRCT) is essential for physicians in the management and following
of patients with airway disease. Although there are at present different m
ethods of bronchi analysis, none of them can provide an absolute diagnosis
of bronchial caliber. The present paper addresses a new approach of bronchi
segmentation in HRCT in order to estimate the bronchial caliber. The metho
d developed is based on mathematical morphology theory, and relies on morph
ological filtering marking techniques derived from the concept of connectio
n cost, and conditional watershed-based segmentation. In order to evaluate
the robustness of the segmentation and the accuracy of the caliber estimate
s, a realistic bronchi modeling based on physiological characteristics has
been developed. It is shown that, according to the size of the bronchi, the
estimation accuracy is up to 90%. (C) 1999 SPIE and IS&T. [S1017-9909(99)0
0601-7].