Three-dimensional reconstruction of upper airways from MDCT

Under the framework of clinical respiratory investigation, providing accurate modalities for morpho-functional analysis is essential for diagnosis improvement, surgical planning and follow-up. This paper focuses on the upper airways investigation and develops an automated approach for 3D mesh reconstruction from MDCT acquisitions. In order to overcome the difficulties related to the complex morphology of the upper airways and to the image gray level heterogeneity of the airway lumens and thin bony septa, the proposed 3D reconstruction methodology combines 2D segmentation and 3D surface regularization approaches. The segmentation algorithm relies on mathematical morphology theory and provides airway lumen robust discrimination from the surrounding tissues, while preserving the connectivity relationship between the different anatomical structures. The 3D regularization step uses an energy-based modeling in order to achieve a smooth and well-fitted 3D surface of the upper airways. An accurate 3D mesh representation of the reconstructed airways makes it possible to develop specific clinical applications such as virtual endoscopy, surgical planning and computer assisted intervention. In addition, building up patient-specific 3D models of upper airways is highly valuable for the study and design of inhaled medication delivery via computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations.