CT Volumetry of Convoluted Objects—A Simple Method Using Volume Averaging

Abstract

Accurate measurement of object volumes using computed tomography is often important but can be challenging, especially for finely convoluted objects with severe marginal blurring from volume averaging. We aimed to test the accuracy of a simple method for volumetry by constructing, scanning and analyzing a phantom object with these characteristics which consisted of a cluster of small lucite beads embedded in petroleum jelly. Our method involves drawing simple regions of interest containing the entirety of the object and a portion of the surrounding material and using its density, along with the densities of pure lucite and petroleum jelly and the slice thickness to calculate the volume of the object in each slice. Comparison of our results with the object’s true volume showed the technique to be highly accurate, irrespective of slice thickness, image noise, reconstruction planes, spatial resolution and variations in regions of interest. We conclude that the method can be easily used for accurate volumetry in clinical and research scans without the need for specialized volumetry computer programs.

IRIS—Intelligent Rapid Interactive Segmentation for Measuring Liver Cyst Volumes in Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease

“…Higher-resolution volumetric imaging with respiratory motion compensation [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] may help with accurate liver cyst volume measurement and to overcome the potential slice misregistration from multiple breath-holds that affect cyst volume measurements. (3) The partial volume effect in voxels of mixed cyst and normal liver tissue may need to be accounted for, particularly in images with large voxels or thick slices, by geometric and biophysical modeling [10,25]. (4) It is desired to minimize human interaction in segmentation, as human interaction can introduce error and operator variability.…”