Variations of the soft tissue thicknesses external to the ribs in pectus excavatum patients

• Autor(a) principal: Rodrigues, Pedro L.
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Outros Autores: Direito-Santos, Bruno, Moreira, António H.J., Fonseca, Jaime C., Pinho, A.C.M., F. Rodrigues, Nuno, Henriques-Coelho, Tiago, Correia-Pinto, Jorge, Vilaça, João L.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/11110/811
• topic: pectus excavatum; nuss procedure; computed tomography scan; radiation exposure; image processing

Background: Surgical repair of pectus excavatum (PE) has become more popular due to improvements in the minimally invasive Nuss procedure. The pre-surgical assessment of PE patients requires Computerized Tomography (CT), as the malformation characteristics vary from patient to patient. Objective: This work aims to characterize soft tissue thickness (STT) external to the ribs among PE patients. It also presents a comparative analysis between the anterior chest wall surface before and after surgical correction. Methods: Through surrounding tissue segmentation in CT data, STT values were calculated at different lines along the thoracic wall, with a reference point in the intersection of coronal and median planes. The comparative analysis between the two 3D anterior chest surfaces sets a surgical correction influence area (SCIA) and a volume of interest (VOI) based on image processing algorithms, 3D surface algorithms, and registration methods. Results: There are always variations between left and right side STTs (2.54±2.05 mm and 2.95±2.97 mm for female and male patients, respectively). STTs are dependent on age, sex, and body mass index of each patient. On female patients, breast tissue induces additional errors in bar manual