Fetita Catalin I, Prêteux Françoise, Beigelman-Aubry Catherine, Grenier Philippe
ARTEMIS Project Unit, Institut National des Télécommunications, 9 rue Charles Fourier, 91011 Evry Cedex, France.
IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2004 Nov;23(11):1353-64. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2004.826945.
In the framework of computer-aided diagnosis, this paper proposes a novel functionality for the computerized tomography (CT)-based investigation of the pulmonary airways. It relies on an energy-based three-dimensional (3-D) reconstruction of the bronchial tree from multislice CT acquisitions, up to the sixth- to seventh-order subdivisions. Global and local analysis of the reconstructed airways is possible by means of specific visualization modalities, respectively, the CT bronchography and the virtual bronchoscopy. The originality of the 3-D reconstruction approach consists in combining axial and radial propagation potentials to control the growth of a subset of low-order airways extracted from the CT volume by means of a robust mathematical morphology operator-the selective marking and depth constrained (SMDC) connection cost. The proposed approach proved to be robust with respect to a large spectrum of airway pathologies, including even severe stenosis (bronchial lumen obstruction/collapse). Validated by expert radiologists, examples of airway 3-D reconstructions are presented and discussed for both normal and pathological cases. They highlight the interest in considering CT bronchography and virtual bronchoscopy as complementary tools for clinical diagnosis and follow-up of airway diseases.
在计算机辅助诊断的框架下，本文提出了一种用于基于计算机断层扫描（CT）的气道研究的新功能。它依赖于从多层CT采集中对支气管树进行基于能量的三维（3-D）重建，直至第六至七阶分支。通过特定的可视化方式，即CT支气管造影和虚拟支气管镜检查，分别对重建气道进行全局和局部分析是可行的。三维重建方法的独特之处在于结合轴向和径向传播势，以控制通过强大的数学形态学算子——选择性标记和深度约束（SMDC）连接成本从CT体积中提取的低阶气道子集的生长。所提出的方法在面对广泛的气道病变时被证明是稳健的，甚至包括严重狭窄（支气管腔阻塞/塌陷）。经专家放射科医生验证，展示并讨论了正常和病理病例的气道三维重建示例。它们突出了将CT支气管造影和虚拟支气管镜检查视为气道疾病临床诊断和随访的互补工具的意义。
