VLPARTVisionX V4 NAME

vlpart - find cutting planes to separate the two lungs

SYNOPSIS

vlpart if=<infile> of=outfile>

DESCRIPTION

vlpart computes two cutting planes starting from the center of the lung mask one moving anterior and the other posterior. The algorithm is based on Dijksrta’s algorithm to find the minimum, cutting distance on a projection of the lung mask to the coronal plane. The input is a lung binary mask such as that computed by vslung. The output is a binary image with two 1-bit wide cutting planes. Due to the projection method each plane has a straight in the sagittal direction for each slice. In the future a 3D algorithm may accomplish more accurate results. The location of places are constrained to the central third of the x-coordinate range to avoid situations that the best cot plane may be outside the lungs in some cases.

The output of vlpart is used in vlrlung to facilitate the partitioning of the whole lung mask into the two individual lung regions.

The latest version connects the two cutting lines in each slice. It is added to make sure that the two parts of lung are separated in each and all slices.

CONSTRAINT

Input and output are binary (byte) images

OPTIONS

	if=		The whole lungs mask
	of=		Output binary image containing two 1-bit wide cutting surfaces.

SEE ALSO

vslung

AUTHOR

J. Padgett