Fan Qing-Wen, Pei Hong-Liang, Luo Feng-Ming, Li Xiao-Ou, Wang Ke, Jiang Wen-Jun
School of Mechanical Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
School of Aerospace Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
Ann Transl Med. 2020 Dec;8(24):1636. doi: 10.21037/atm-20-7300.
One of the difficulties and hot topics in the field of computer vision and image processing is extraction of the high-level pulmonary trachea from patients' lung CT images. Current, common bronchial extraction methods are limited by the phenomenon of bronchial loss and leakage, and cannot extract the higher-level pulmonary trachea, which does not meet the requirements of guiding lung puncture procedures.
Based on the characteristic "tubular structure" (ring or semi-closed ring) of the pulmonary trachea in CT images, an algorithm based on dynamic tubular edge contour is proposed. In axial, coronal and sagittal CT images, the algorithm could extract the skeletal line of the pulmonary trachea and vessel-connecting region, perform elliptical fitting, extract the pulmonary trachea by the ratio of the ellipse's long and short axes, and obtain point cloud data of the pulmonary trachea in three directions. The point cloud data was fused to obtain a complete three-dimensional model of the pulmonary trachea.
The algorithm was verified using CT data from "EXACT09", and could extract the pulmonary trachea to the 10-11 level, which effectively solves the problems of leakage and loss of the trachea.
We have constructed a novel extraction algorithm of pulmonary trachea that can guide the doctors to decide the puncture path and avoid the large trachea, which has important theoretical and practical significance for reducing puncture complications and the mortality rate.
从患者肺部CT图像中提取高级别的肺气管是计算机视觉和图像处理领域的难点及热点之一。当前，常见的支气管提取方法受支气管丢失和泄漏现象的限制，无法提取更高级别的肺气管，不能满足指导肺穿刺手术的要求。
基于CT图像中肺气管的“管状结构”（环形或半封闭环形）特征，提出一种基于动态管状边缘轮廓的算法。在轴向、冠状和矢状CT图像中，该算法能够提取肺气管的骨骼线和血管连接区域，进行椭圆拟合，通过椭圆长短轴比例提取肺气管，并获取三个方向上肺气管的点云数据。将点云数据融合以获得完整的肺气管三维模型。
使用“EXACT09”的CT数据对该算法进行验证，其能够提取到10-11级的肺气管，有效解决了气管泄漏和丢失的问题。
我们构建了一种新型的肺气管提取算法，可指导医生确定穿刺路径并避开大气管，这对于降低穿刺并发症和死亡率具有重要的理论和实际意义。
