Anatomy, variation, and asymmetry of the bronchial tree in the African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus)

The avian respiratory system includes an immobilized, nearly volume-constant, gas-exchanging lung connected to a set of air sacs that fill the body cavity. These micro-computed tomography (µCT) scans of deceased African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) were used to analyse anatomical variation in the the gas-exchanging lung by taking select metrics and by generating 3D surface models of airways. The data include select portions of eleven axial µCT image series taken every 94.19–97.23 µm and one axial µCT series taken every 41.08 µm.

Methods
Eleven adult deceased specimens of P. erithacus were intubated and inflated with a 60cc syringe before imaging on a Siemens Inveon PET/SPECT/µCT at the University of Utah. One specimen was re-inflated at a later date using the same method and scanned at higher resolution on an X-Tek HMXST225 µCT at Harvard’s Center for Nanoscale Systems in Cambridge, MA. All parrots died of natural causes that did not include respiratory disease. Each bird was renamed to preserve anonymity.