Abstract #3342

Pyzalski R, Fain S, O'Halloran R, Holmes J, Peterson E

By acquiring diffusion and non-diffusion weighted hyperpolarized He-3 images of the lung, the airways can easily be separated from the parenchyma by computing the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) map. An airway mask can then be generated by performing region growing on the ADC map. By using this strategy, the typical functional information from the He-3 MRI can be combined with the structural information from the airway mask. This could be used in a similar manner to CT based airway segmentation techniques to measure and map out the airways for further analysis.