Progress towards a medical image through CFD analysis toolkit for respiratory function assessment on a clinical time scale

A semi-automated end-to-end medical image through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis toolkit has been developed, with the ultimate goal of providing clinical-time-scale (hours) diagnostic information for respiratory disease and injury assessment. A software system is in place that proceeds from a standard clinical image format, through lobe and upper bronchi segmentation, upper airway ldquothinningrdquo, airway generation partitioning, and truncation, lower bronchiole lobe volume filling, octree-based unstructured mesh generation for the upper airways, quasi-one-dimensional geometric modeling for the lower airways, and CFD analysis of respiration. Each of these components is presented.