Three-dimensional reconstruction of human bronchial tree in HRCT

This paper addresses the issue of 3-D human bronchial tree reconstruction from 2-D segmented slices. The 2-D grey-level slices to be segmented are reconstructed from volumetric data acquired by using a high resolution computerized tomography (HRCT) system operating in spiral mode. The proposed 3-D reconstruction technique consists in three major steps: (1) a fully-automated 2-D segmentation of bronchi performed on each slice and based on mathematical morphology theory; (2) a 3-D oriented and multivalued structure construction characterizing the 3-D topology of the segmented volume and a 3-D oriented propagation based on this structure; and (3) the 3-D reconstruction by using a 3-D mesh technique. Results are presented and discussed.