Lung parenchyma segmentation from CT images based on material decomposition

Abstract

We present a fully automated method for extracting the lung region from volumetric X-ray CT images based on material decomposition. By modeling the human thorax as a composition of different materials, the proposed method follows a threshold-based, hierarchical voxel classification strategy. The segmentation procedure involves the automatic computation of threshold values and consists on three main steps: patient segmentation and decomposition, large airways extraction and lung parenchyma decomposition, and lung region of interest segmentation. Experimental results were performed on thoracic CT images acquired from 30 patients. The method provides a reproducible set of thresholds for accurate extraction of the lung parenchyma, needed for computer aided diagnosis systems. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.