Quantitative Analysis of Morphological Changes in Conducting Airways
摘要
The upper respiratory tract is subject to various pathologies that profoundly impact individuals’ quality of life and, often, can lead to fatalities. These disorders may be congenital or acquired throughout life, frequently presenting as asymptomatic and diagnosed belatedly. In this context, imaging diagnostic methods, such as computed tomography, offer the possibility of detecting and treating patients. Additionally, powerful tools for medical image post-processing enable advanced analysis of anatomical structures, facilitating the identification of anomalies and dysfunctions. Mathematical methods involving differential geometry can be applied to analyze medical systems, providing a more comprehensive and quantitative understanding of anatomy and physiological processes. Although the literature already reports the application of these methods in the biomechanics of the circulatory system, quantitative analyses of deformation in the airways are scarce. To address this gap, from a computed tomography, a trachea was segmented and post-processed using an open-source automated tool. With the original model, Meshmixer® was used to derive 4 other fictitious simulations of the deformed organ, using a manual method. From these datasets and the same segmentation and post-processing tool, parameters indicating the degree of organ deformation could be extracted. The trachea with stenosis was found to be the most curved and twisted (0.041 and 0.203, respectively), although visually it did not appear so. Furthermore, it was possible to show the influence of length on the tortuosity calculation. The most visually tortuous model - consequently longer, presented a reduced value for this parameter, 0.026, while the most visually curved model - with a shorter length, presented 0.126. The results using the current tool showed the potential of analyzing the models geometrically, since each value could indicate different clinical interpretations of each parameter. In the future, this could assist clinicians in evaluating morphological changes in organs.