Abstract
Lung function has been evaluated in both health and disease states by techniques, such as pulmonary function tests, which generally study aggregate function. These decades old modalities have yielded a valuable understanding of global physiologic and pathophysiologic structure-to-function relationships. However, such approaches have reached their limits. They cannot meet the current and anticipated needs of new surgical and pharmaceutical treatments. 4-D CT can provide insights into regional lung function (ventilation and blood flow) and thus can provide information at an early stage of disease when intervention will have the greatest impact. Lung CT over the last decade has helped with further defining anatomic features in disease, but has lagged behind advances on the cellular and molecular front largely because of the failure to account for functional correlates to structural pathology. Commercially available CT scanners are now capable of volumetric data acquisition in a breath-hold and capable of multi-level slice acquisitions of the heart and lungs with a per slice scan aperture of 50 - 300 msec, allowing for regional blood flow measurements. Static, volumetric imaging of the lung is inadequate in that much of lung pathology is a dynamic phenomenon and, thus, is only detectable if the lung is imaged as air and blood are flowing. This paper review the methodologies and early physiologic findings associated with our measures of lung tissue properties coupled with regional ventilation and perfusion.© (1999) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

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