Generation of Pig Airways using Rules Developed from the Measurements of Physical Airways.

Abstract

A method for generating bronchial tree would be helpful when constructing models of the tree for benchtop experiments as well as for numerical modeling of flow or sound propagation in the airways. Early studies documented the geometric details of the human airways that were used to develop methods for generating human airway tree. However, methods for generating animal airway tree are scarcer. Earlier studies suggested that the morphology of animal airways can be significantly different from that of humans. Hence, using algorithms for the human airways may not be accurate in generating models of animal airway geometry. The objective of this study is to develop an algorithm for generating pig airway tree based on the geometric details extracted from the physical measurements. In the current study, measured values of branch diameters, lengths and bifurcation angles and rotation of bifurcating planes were used to develop an algorithm that is capable of generating a realistic pig airway tree. The generation relations between parent and daughter branches were found to follow certain trends. The diameters and the length of different branches were dependent on airway generations while the bifurcation angles were primarily dependent on bifurcation plane rotations. These relations were sufficient to develop rules for generating a model of the pig large airways. The results suggested that the airway tree generated from the algorithm can provide an approximate geometric model of pig airways for computational and benchtop studies.