Region-based geometric modelling of human airways and arterial vessels.

Anatomically precise geometric models of human airways and arterial vessels play a critical role in the analysis of air and blood flows in human bodies. The established geometric modelling methods become invalid when the model consists of bronchioles or small vessels. This paper presents a new method for reconstructing the entire airway tree and carotid vessels from point clouds obtained from CT or MR images. A novel layer-by-layer searching algorithm has been developed to recognize branches of the airway tree and arterial vessels from the point clouds. Instead of applying uniform accuracy to all branches regardless of the number of available points, the surface patches on each branch are constructed adaptively based on the number of available elemental points, which leads to the elimination of distortions occurring at small bronchi and vessels. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.