A major goal of lung cancer screening is to identify individuals with particular phenotypes that are associated with high risk of cancer. Identifying relevant phenotypes is complicated by the variation in body position and body composition. In the brain, standardized coordinate systems (e.g., atlases) have enabled separate consideration of local features from gross / global structure. To date, no analogous standard atlas has been presented to enable spatial mapping and harmonization in chest computational tomography (CT). In this paper, we propose a thoracic atlas built upon a large low dose CT database with no screening detected malignancy (age 46-79 years, mean 64.9 years). The application validity of the developed atlas is evaluated in terms of discriminative capability for different anatomic phenotypes, including body mass index (BMI), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and coronary artery calcification (CAC).
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