H. Yano, M. Feuerstein, T. Kitasaka, K. Mori Study on bronchus region extraction from 3D chest CT images using local intensity structure analysis 18th Meeting of the Japan Society of Computer Assisted Surgery, Tokyo, Japan, November 2009 (bib)
	This paper presents a method for extracting bronchus regions from 3D chest CT images. Several research groups have proposed methods for extracting bronchus regions by using region growing algorithm. However, these methods do not work well in the case of tumors divide the bronchial tree into several parts. Therefore, this paper proposes a method that can extract the bronchus region in such cases using local intensity structure analysis, CT value distribution and shape features. First, the proposed method extracts cylindrical structures by using the hessian matrix to analyze local intensity structures. Second, we extract tube structures by using a modified RRF (Radial Reach Filter) to analyze CT value distributions and shape features. Finally, we extract the bronchus regions by combining the result of hessian analysis and RRF. We applied the proposed method to four 3D chest CT datasets. Experimental results showed that this method can extract well in the case of tumors dividing the bronchial tree.
	This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each authors copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.