Una procedura per l'analisi numerica del tessuto polmonare in immagini CT

The paper describes the software developed for a numerical evaluation of CT thorax images, aiming to the characterization of the pulmonary tissue... The procedure, implemented in Microsoft Windows, consists on two programs. The program Parenchima processes the images obtained in the examination of a patient in order to detect both lungs in each image; given a photometric threshold, the program detects the blobs contained in the pulmonary areas and produces the blob list whit position and shape features. The program Estrai processes the blob list obtaining a set of global parameters that quantifies the overall area of the pulmonary tissue in the processed images, the overall area of the pixels with luminance values less than the selected threshold and the distributions of blob area and shape values. The paper report an application study where the implemented procedure has been used to process images obtained by patients affected by emphysema: the study shows that the procedure can be used as diagnostic tool in routine applications.