A new measuring method for the forced vital capacity of individual lung lobes using multidetector-row CT

Forced vital capacity (FVC) of individual lung lobes is important information for thoracic surgeries such as the living-donor lobar lung transplantation. However conventional methods for measuring the FVC of individual lung lobes have not considered the variation of the lobar function among subjects. This paper proposes a new method for measuring the FVC of individual lung lobes using, Multidefector-row CT. The method first estimates contribution ratios of individual lung lobes for the FVC of whole lung. Using the estimated contribution ratios and the FVC of whole lung measured by a spirometry, our method estimates the FVC of individual lung lobes. As a result of applying the proposed method to live normal subjects, we could successfully measure the FVC of individual lung lobes.