MR image assisted drug delivery in respiratory tract and trachea tissues based on an enhanced level set method

In medical diagnosis and therapy, finding an appropriate method to evaluate the effect of various drugs is crucial. There are several ways to qualify a drug for a specific disease and one way is through medical image analysis. This process varies with the tissues we want to analyze and the imaging technique that is employed. For hydrous tissues such as nasal and trachea, Magnetic Resonance Imaging can be helpful for further evaluations. Trachea can be challenged by an antigen which will increase both nasal vascular permeability and intranasal pressure. Another effect of antigen challenge into nasal cavity which may cause nasal blockage, is swelling of nasal mucosa and a decrease in nasopharyngeal airway. In this paper, we study the effect of an antihistamine drug on swelling of mucosa. This antihistamine is called Azelastine and is injected to guinea pig to evaluate the swelling changes of nasal and trachea mucosa. After 20 minutes of injection, a MR image of the motionless animal is taken and this imaging will continue for 30, 40, 50 and 60 minutes from injection. Due to the ambiguous nature of respiratory tract, finding a precise method for processing has useful results. Watershed algorithm has widespread function in medical images but its defects in segmentation can be modified by different methods. An enhanced level set method is used here; a nonparametric active contour for nasal and trachea detection. This automatic image segmentation and tissue detection can help physicians evaluate the effect of a specific drug from medical images.