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M. Suter, J. M. Reinhardt, D. Easker, D. Riker, E. A. Hoffman, and G. McLennan. Classification of pulmonary airway disease based on mucosal color analysis. In A. Amini and A. Manduca, eds., Proc. SPIE Conf. Medical Imaging, vol. 5746, pp. 465-473, San Diego, CA, 2005.

Abstract: Airway mucosal color changes occur in response to the development of bronchial diseases including lung cancer, cystic fibrosis, chronic bronchitis, emphysema and asthma. These associated changes are often visualized using standard bronchoscopy techniques. A limitation to this form of assessment is that the subtle changes that indicate early stages in disease development may often be missed as a result of this highly subjective assessment, especially in inexperienced bronchoscopists. Developments in bronchoscope technology have resulted in bronchoscopes with tri-chromatic, CCD chips. As a result it is now feasible to perform digital color analysis of the pulmonary airway mucosa in an attempt to facilitate a greater understanding of pulmonary airway disease response. Colors detected by a camera are dependent on the content of the scene, the scene illumination and the properties of the camera. To ensure accuracy of the measured mucosal colors combined intensity correction, to simulate uniform illumination, and color calibration procedures are performed. A database of airway mucosal color constructed from healthy human volunteers is used as a standard against which quantitative comparisons are performed to mucosa with known apparent airway abnormalities. Real-time classification of the measured airway mucosal color is executed through quantitative feature comparisons to the developed standard. This approach demonstrates great promise as an effective detection and diagnosis tool to highlight potentially abnormal airway mucosa identifying a region possibly suited to further analysis via airway forceps biopsy, or newly developed optical biopsy strategies.

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Keywords: airways bronchoscopy color

Other publications by: M. Suter, J. M. Reinhardt, D. Easker, D. Riker, E. A. Hoffman, G. McLennan

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The Reinhardt Biomedical Imaging Lab