A method for measuring tubular anatomical structures, for example lung
airways, comprises isolating by at least one segmentation process a given
tubular anatomical structure of interest and measuring at least one
attribute of the structure of interest. A system for measuring lung
airways using acquired image data is provided. The system comprises an
imaging device for acquiring the image data and an image processing
device coupled to the imaging device. The imaging processing device is
configured for isolating by at least one segmentation process a given
airway of interest, fitting an inner ellipse to an inner boundary of the
given airway and an outer ellipse to an outer boundary of the airway
structure using statistical techniques at a given point in the airway,
and further configured for generating measurements of the given airway
using the inner and outer ellipses.