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A measure for characterizing sliding on lung boundaries
Journal article   Peer reviewed

A measure for characterizing sliding on lung boundaries

Ryan Amelon, Kunlin Cao, Joseph M Reinhardt, Gary E Christensen and Madhavan Raghavan
Annals of biomedical engineering, Vol.42(3), pp.642-650
03/2014
DOI: 10.1007/s10439-013-0920-5
PMCID: PMC3943475
PMID: 24114112

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Abstract

The lobes of the lungs slide relative to each other during breathing. Quantifying lobar sliding can aid in better understanding lung function, better modeling of lung dynamics, and a better understanding of the limits of image registration near fissures. We propose a novel measure to characterize lobe sliding in the lung based on the displacement field obtained from image registration of CT scans. When two sliding lobes are modeled as a continuum, the discontinuity in the displacement field at the fissure will manifest as elevated maximum shear – the proposed measure – which is capable of capturing both the level and orientation of sliding. Six human lungs were analyzed using scans spanning functional residual capacity (FRC) to total lung capacity (TLC). The lung lobes were segmented and registered on a lobe-by-lobe basis to obtain the displacement field from which the proposed sliding measure was calculated. The sliding measure was found to be insignificant in the parenchyma, as relatively little tissue shear occurs here. On the other hand, it was elevated along the fissures. Thus a map of the proposed sliding measure of the entire lung clearly delineates and quantifies sliding between lung lobes. Sliding is a key aspect of lung deformation during breathing. The proposed measure may help resolve artifacts introduced by sliding in deformation analysis techniques used for radiotherapy.
Biomechanics Image registration Lobe Lobe sliding Lobe slipping Lung Pulmonary Tissue mechanics

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