Diagnostic imaging for lung diseases using micro 3D CT image

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We have developed a prototype system of micro CT scanner that is capable of imaging lung specimens with spatial resolution of 5 μ m. This prototype system allows us to precisely observe normal and abnormal microstructures of lung. Our purpose of this study is to establish a medical diagnostic technique based on micro CT images by building 3-D micro CT image database of lung diseases and by analyzing features of them.This study consists. of the following three parts : (1) measurement study of lung specimens, (2) visualization and numerical analysis of 3-D micro CT images, (3) performance improvement of the micro CT scanner system. Those parts are described below in detail.(1)It takes about twelve hours to measure a lung specimen in μ m order by the prototype system. One of difficulties of performing study is to keep stable situation of measurement system by controlling mechanical variations due to heat of the X-ray tube. The mechanical variations result in blurred images when reconstructing micro CT images. Through several measurement studies, we accumulated know-how to reconstruct lung specimens and collected 16 samples.(2)The development of visualization and analysis software tools is required to observe the lung specimens in μ m order. The visualization tools allow us to observe 3D lung specimen images interactively and to measure morphological features quantitatively. These sophisticated tools made it possible to investigate the structure analysis of lung cancers.(3)Reduction of the measurement time is one of problems to be solved for the micro CT imaging. For that we introduce a cone-beam measurement system with a flat panel detector into the micro CT scanner. The main difference between the latest prototype system and previous one is that an X-ray tube and a detector of the latest prototype rotate around a lung specimen.