Detection of Bronchopulmonary Segments on High-Resolution CT--Preliminary Results

Bronchopulmonary segments are subdivisions of lung lobes and provide detailed description of lung anatomy. They are used in surgical resection planning and airway disease quantification. In this paper, we present a method for determining lung segments in volumetric high-resolution CT (HRCT) using segmental bronchi. The bronchial tree is automatically segmented and manually corrected to ensure optimum accuracy. The bronchopulmonary segments are determined by a 3D volume growing with a novel surface smoothing algorithm. Using the detected bronchoplumonary segments of three normal subjects, we measure the inter-patient variation of position of the segments in three subjects.