Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Semiautomated Skeletonization Of The Pulmonary Arterial Tree In Micro-Ct Images, Christopher C. Hanger, Steven Thomas Haworth, Robert C. Molthen, Christopher A. Dawson

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

We present a simple and robust approach that utilizes planar images at different angular rotations combined with unfiltered back-projection to locate the central axes of the pulmonary arterial tree. Three-dimensional points are selected interactively by the user. The computer calculates a sub- volume unfiltered back-projection orthogonal to the vector connecting the two points and centered on the first point. Because more x-rays are absorbed at the thickest portion of the vessel, in the unfiltered back-projection, the darkest pixel is assumed to be the center of the vessel. The computer replaces this point with the newly computer-calculated point. A second back-projection …