eprintid: 10082675 rev_number: 22 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/10/08/26/75 datestamp: 2019-10-01 11:12:04 lastmod: 2021-09-30 22:33:02 status_changed: 2019-10-01 11:12:04 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Quan, K creators_name: Tanno, R creators_name: Shipley, RJ creators_name: Brown, JS creators_name: Jacob, J creators_name: Hurst, JR creators_name: Hawkes, DJ title: Reproducibility of an airway tapering measurement in computed tomography with application to bronchiectasis ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B02 divisions: C10 divisions: D17 divisions: K71 divisions: B04 divisions: C05 divisions: F48 divisions: F45 divisions: F42 keywords: tapering; computed tomography (CT) simulations; reproducibility; airways; CT metrology note: Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ abstract: We propose a pipeline to acquire a scalar tapering measurement from the carina to the most distal point of an individual airway visible on computed tomography (CT). We show the applicability of using tapering measurements on clinically acquired data by quantifying the reproducibility of the tapering measure. We generate a spline from the centerline of an airway to measure the area and arclength at contiguous intervals. The tapering measurement is the gradient of the linear regression between area in log space and arclength. The reproducibility of the measure was assessed by analyzing different radiation doses, voxel sizes, and reconstruction kernel on single timepoint and longitudinal CT scans and by evaluating the effect of airway bifurcations. Using 74 airways from 10 CT scans, we show a statistical difference, p ¼ 3.4 × 10−4, in tapering between healthy airways (n ¼ 35) and those affected by bronchiectasis (n ¼ 39). The difference between the mean of the two populations is 0.011 mm−1, and the difference between the medians of the two populations was 0.006 mm−1. The tapering measurement retained a 95% confidence interval of 0.005 mm−1 in a simulated 25 mAs scan and retained a 95% confidence of 0.005 mm−1 on simulated CTs up to 1.5 times the original voxel size. We have established an estimate of the precision of the tapering measurement and estimated the effect on precision of the simulated voxel size and CT scan dose. We recommend that the scanner calibration be undertaken with the phantoms as described, on the specific CT scanner, radiation dose, and reconstruction algorithm that are to be used in any quantitative studies date: 2019-07 date_type: published official_url: https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.6.3.034003 oa_status: green full_text_type: pub pmcid: PMC6745534 language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1697713 doi: 10.1117/1.JMI.6.3.034003 pii: 19024RR lyricists_name: Brown, Jeremy lyricists_name: Hawkes, David lyricists_name: Hurst, John lyricists_name: Jacob, Joseph lyricists_name: Quan, Kenneth lyricists_name: Shipley, Rebecca lyricists_name: Tanno, Ryutaro lyricists_id: JBROW91 lyricists_id: DJHAW78 lyricists_id: JHURS15 lyricists_id: JJACO76 lyricists_id: KQUAN55 lyricists_id: RSHIP58 lyricists_id: RTANN54 actors_name: Flynn, Bernadette actors_id: BFFLY94 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public publication: Journal of Medical Imaging volume: 6 number: 3 article_number: 034003 event_location: United States issn: 2329-4302 citation: Quan, K; Tanno, R; Shipley, RJ; Brown, JS; Jacob, J; Hurst, JR; Hawkes, DJ; (2019) Reproducibility of an airway tapering measurement in computed tomography with application to bronchiectasis. Journal of Medical Imaging , 6 (3) , Article 034003. 10.1117/1.JMI.6.3.034003 <https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.6.3.034003>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10082675/1/034003_1.pdf