Segmentation of intrathoracic airway trees: a fuzzy logic approach

Three-dimensional (3-D) analysis of airway trees extracted from computed tomography (CT) image data can provide objective information about lung structure and function. However, manual analysis of 3-D lung CT images is tedious, time consuming and, thus, impractical for routine clinical care. The authors have previously reported an automated rule-based method for extraction of airway trees from 3-D CT images using a priori knowledge about airway-tree anatomy. Although the method´s sensitivity was quite good, its specificity suffered from a large number of falsely detected airways. The authors present a new approach to airway-tree detection based on fuzzy logic that increases the method´s specificity without compromising its sensitivity. The method was validated in 32 CT image slices randomly selected from five volumetric canine electron-beam CT data sets. The fuzzy-logic method significantly outperformed the previously reported rule-based method (p<0.002).