NASAL-Geom, a free upper respiratory tract 3D model reconstruction software

The tool NASAL-Geom, a free upper respiratory tract 3D model reconstruction software, is here described. As a free software, researchers and professionals are welcome to obtain, analyze, improve and redistribute it, potentially increasing the rate of development, and reducing at the same time ethical conflicts regarding medical applications which cannot be analyzed. Additionally, the tool has been optimized for the specific task of reading upper respiratory tract Computerized Tomography scans, and producing 3D geometries. The reconstruction process is divided into three stages: preprocessing (including Metal Artifact Reduction, noise removal, and feature enhancement), segmentation (where the nasal cavity is identified), and 3D geometry reconstruction. The tool has been automatized (i.e. no human intervention is required) a critical feature to avoid bias in the reconstructed geometries. The applied methodology is discussed, as well as the program robustness and precision.

本文介绍了一款免费的上呼吸道三维模型重建软件NASAL-Geom。作为一款免费软件，欢迎科研人员与专业人士获取、分析、改进并重新分发该软件，此举有望加快开发进度，同时减少针对无法开展分析的医疗应用所引发的伦理争议。此外，该软件针对读取上呼吸道计算机断层扫描（Computerized Tomography）影像并生成三维几何模型的特定任务进行了优化。其重建流程分为三个阶段：预处理阶段（包含金属伪影抑制（Metal Artifact Reduction）、噪声去除与特征增强）、分割阶段（用于识别鼻腔区域）以及三维几何重建阶段。该工具已实现全自动化（无需人工干预），这是避免重建几何模型产生偏倚的关键特性。本文还对所采用的方法、程序的鲁棒性与精度进行了讨论。