Implementation of a 3D topographic thinning model for assessing aerosol deposition of radioactive assays in small-animal CT/SPECT imaging

Nuclear imaging serves as an important tool for the visualization and analysis of nebulized radiolabeled particle deposition in the lung, enabling assessment of both nebulizer properties and lung function. To date, most research in this field has been focused on mathematical modeling from empirical data. This work examines the use of high-resolution 3D CT/SPECT imaging technology accompanied by automated lung segmentation to build a novel analysis model based on topographic thinning of the dual-modality tomograms.