Patient-customized 3D reconstruction of human ribs from lung MDCT dataset

An accurate algorithm for 3D rib reconstruction of an individual patient is presented. Segmented ribs are reconstructed in a cylindrical coordinate system, based on available knowledge of human rib geometry. Each rib is reconstructed individually using data from multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) images, which provides geometrical data including unique angle, length, curvature and mass. The proposed algorithm was tested on the datasets from 15 patients. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations show high similarity between reconstruction results and reference masks provided by an experienced radiologist.