A three-stage method for the 3D reconstruction of the tracheobronchial tree from CT scans

Abstract

This paper proposes a method for segmenting the airways from CT scans of the chest to obtain a 3D modelthat can be used in the virtual bronchoscopy for the exploration and the planning of paths to the lesions.The method is composed of 3 stages: a gross segmentation that reconstructs the main airway tree usingadaptive region growing, a finer segmentation that identifies any potential airway region based on a 2Dprocess that enhances bronchi walls using local information, and a final process to connect any isolatedbronchus to the main airways using a morphologic reconstruction process and a path planning technique.The paper includes two examples for the evaluation and discussion of the proposal.