Abstract
Pulmonary diseases of the lung often cause the change of elasticity. This article proposes a novel elasticity imaging method using multidetector-row CT (MDCT). The new method is based on non-rigid image registration from MDCT images of the inspiratory lung to those of the expiratory lung. The elasticity is calculated by local volume change between respirations. Also, this article introduces a new image registration method based on a fuzzy control system. The fuzzy control deforms the given image according to knowledge on density of lung vessels, shape, and anatomical structure. The proposed elasticity imaging method was evaluated using computer synthetic data and subjects’ data. The experimental results showed that the proposed method deformed the given image successfully, and estimated the relative elasticity with a correlation coefficient of 0.86.