Figure 3
The bifurcations of a 14-generation bronchus detected by Ziostaion2 using the DOM. (A) On the bronchial tree pathway indicated by the green line, the pink dots represent bifurcation points and the pink X indicates the tip of the bronchus detected by the DOM. (B) Longitudinal cross-sections (upper panel) and transverse cross-sections (lower panel) of the bronchus. The circled numbers indicate the bronchial generation. We used Ziostation2 software to analyze virtual bronchoscopic images of the second- to fourth-generation bronchi, and switched to multi-planar reconstruction to manually detect bronchi of the fifth generation and higher. The transverse cross-sectional images were obscure after about the seventh-generation bronchi. However, it was still possible to obtain information on bronchial bifurcation, since when we placed the cursor (red arrow) on another bronchus in the longitudinal cross-section image, the cursor appeared simultaneously on the transverse cross-sectional image as a virtual bronchoscopy–like dimension. For instance, on the transverse cross-sectional image of the 14th-generation bifurcation, bifurcations are located in the directions of 10 o’clock (red dot) and 4 o’clock (red arrow).
