Computed tomography airway tree tortuosity features predict functional small airway disease in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Over 1 000 000 Canadians are diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and by 2020 the disease will be the third deadliest on Earth. Despite high prevalence, diagnosis of COPD occurs late in the disease course, after a large portion of the small airways are destroyed. Current methods to quantify small airway disease (SAD) using the Disease Probability Measure (DPM) approach requires CT images acquired at full inspiration and full expiration, and therefore there are technical challenges and dose concerns Computed Tomography (CT) imaging using only a single full inspiration CT image can be used segment the central airway tree and generate quantitative morphometric measurements.