Software system design for volumetric probing of the airway wall in MDCT

Chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and asthma induce airway wall thickening and lumen narrowing which affect the overall respiratory function. New medicine and therapeutic protocols are developed in order to reverse such airway remodeling and to restore the pulmonary function. One of the key issues is to evaluate the efficiency of a therapy, that is, to assess the changes in airway lumen/wall caliber induced by the treatment. This paper develops a software system able to select and analyze image volumetric probes of airway wall from multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT) acquisitions performed before and after treatment. Such volumetric analysis provides higher accuracy in detecting variations of bronchus wall thickness, especially near bifurcations, than classic 2D techniques estimating cross-section areas. A higher robustness with respect to the variability of the MDCT acquisition protocol and to the inspiratory lung volume is also expected.