Accurate estimation of bronchial caliber in high resolution
computerized tomography (HRCT) is essential for physicians in the
management and following of patients with airway disease. Although
there are at present different methods 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
method developed is based on mathematical morphology theory,
and relies on morphological filtering, marking techniques derived
from the concept of connection cost, and conditional watershed-based
segmentation. In order to evaluate the robustness of the segmentation
and the accuracy of the caliber estimates, 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%.
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