Construction of a Model of Human Nasal Airways Using In Vivo Morphometric Data

A method has been developed for constructing replicas of human nasal airways based on in vivo morphometric data obtained from magnetic resonance images. The procedure consists of digitizing the perimeters of images of coronal sections of the airways, creating lofted surfaces between adjacent coronal images and milling the airway surfaces in 1.5 mm acrylic plastic with a computer-controlled micromilling machine. The model described here consists of 74 sections that encompass the airways from the anterior nares to the posterior nasopharynx. A three-dimensional geometric model of known dimensions was used to measure the accuracy of the data acquisition procedure; this was found to be within 1% for both perimeter and cross-sectional area.