• Matthias Haas, Bernd Hamm, and Stefan M Niehues.
• Department of Radiology, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Hindenburgdamm 30, D-12203 Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: Matthias.Haas@charite.de.
• Acad Radiol. 2014 May 1; 21 (5): 633-8.

Rationale And ObjectivesToday, lung volumes can be easily calculated from chest computed tomography (CT) scans. Modern postprocessing workstations allow automated volume measurement of data sets acquired. However, there are challenges in the use of lung volume as an indicator of pulmonary disease when it is obtained from routine CT. Intra-individual variation and methodologic aspects have to be considered. Our goal was to assess the reliability of volumetric measurements in routine CT lung scans.Materials And MethodsForty adult cancer patients whose lungs were unaffected by the disease underwent routine chest CT scans in 3-month intervals, resulting in a total number of 302 chest CT scans. Lung volume was calculated by automatic volumetry software. On average of 7.2 CT scans were successfully evaluable per patient (range 2-15). Intra-individual changes were assessed.ResultsIn the set of patients investigated, lung volume was approximately normally distributed, with a mean of 5283 cm(3) (standard deviation = 947 cm(3), skewness = -0.34, and curtosis = 0.16). Between different scans in one and the same patient the median intra-individual standard deviation in lung volume was 853 cm(3) (16% of the mean lung volume).ConclusionsAutomatic lung segmentation of routine chest CT scans allows a technically stable estimation of lung volume. However, substantial intra-individual variations have to be considered. A median intra-individual deviation of 16% in lung volume between different routine scans was found.Copyright © 2014 AUR. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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