LAUSR

Investigations of pulmonary airflows in respiratory systems are important for the diagnostics and treatment of pulmonary diseases. For accurate prediction of the flow field in an airway, a numerical simulation must be conducted using the true geometry from Computed Tomography (CT) data. Flow simulation is still a difficult task because of the mesh generation process and preprocessing setup procedures. In this study, we developed a voxel image-based simulation method using an automatic detection algorithm for airway outlets to simplify the simulation process and improve its applicability in the medical field. Our approach is based on the lattice Boltzmann method with a topology analysis algorithm, which can preserve all raw information from the original CT images and give an accurate flow field inside the airways. Our method can reproduce the essential flow features inside airways, is highly efficient, and decreases the overall processing time. Thus, it has a great potential for future real-time airflow analyses to provide airflow information to medical experts. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.