A 3D model of the human lung with lung regions characterization

A method for modelling human lungs is presented. The model includes both knowledge of lung anatomy and knowledge of the appearance of objects in high resolutions CT images of the lungs. Symbolic, structural and geometric information in the model is stored in frame structures. Frames allow easy representation of the hierarchical structures that are found in human anatomy. A few anatomical landmarks are determined and used for lung characterization as clinically meaningful regions. The results from automatic landmark segmentation, tested on 1685 images from 84 patient studies, show that the carina, hilum, spinal cord and sternum are quite stable features across patients. The use of anatomical landmarks and lung regions helps the system to deal with image and human variability.