Robust system for human airway-tree segmentation

Michael W. Graham; Jason D. Gibbs; William E. Higgins

doi:10.1117/12.768706

11 March 2008 Robust system for human airway-tree segmentation

Michael W. Graham, Jason D. Gibbs, William E. Higgins

Proceedings Volume 6914, Medical Imaging 2008: Image Processing; 69141J (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.768706
Event: Medical Imaging, 2008, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Robust and accurate segmentation of the human airway tree from multi-detector computed-tomography (MDCT) chest scans is vital for many pulmonary-imaging applications. As modern MDCT scanners can detect hundreds of airway tree branches, manual segmentation and semi-automatic segmentation requiring significant user intervention are impractical for producing a full global segmentation. Fully-automated methods, however, may fail to extract small peripheral airways. We propose an automatic algorithm that searches the entire lung volume for airway branches and poses segmentation as a global graph-theoretic optimization problem. The algorithm has shown strong performance on 23 human MDCT chest scans acquired by a variety of scanners and reconstruction kernels. Visual comparisons with adaptive region-growing results and quantitative comparisons with manually-defined trees indicate a high sensitivity to peripheral airways and a low false-positive rate. In addition, we propose a suite of interactive segmentation tools for cleaning and extending critical areas of the automatically segmented result. These interactive tools have potential application for image-based guidance of bronchoscopy to the periphery, where small, terminal branches can be important visual landmarks. Together, the automatic segmentation algorithm and interactive tool suite comprise a robust system for human airway-tree segmentation.

Citation Download Citation

Michael W. Graham, Jason D. Gibbs, and William E. Higgins "Robust system for human airway-tree segmentation", Proc. SPIE 6914, Medical Imaging 2008: Image Processing, 69141J (11 March 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.768706

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