Virtual bronchoscopic navigation.

Virtual bronchoscopic navigation (VBN) is a method for the guidance of a bronchoscope to peripheral lesions using virtual bronchoscopy (VB) images of the bronchial path. Irrespective of the bronchoscopist's skill level, the bronchoscope can be readily guided to the target in a short time. A system to automatically search for the bronchial path to the target has been developed and clinically applied; this system produces VB images of the path to the fourth- to twelfth- (median, sixth-) generation bronchi, and displays the VB images simultaneously with real bronchoscopic images. In this article, the author discusses VBN and the automatic VBN system, reviews the published literature, and describes its usefulness and limitations.