Micro-computed tomography measurements of peripheral lung pathology in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Background: The smaller airways, < 2 mm in diameter, offer little resistance in normal lungs, but become the major site of obstruction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Objective: To examine bronchiolar remodeling and alveolar destruction in COPD using micro-computed tomography (micro-CT).

Methods: Micro-CT was used to measure the number and cross-sectional lumen area of terminal bronchioles (TB) and alveolar mean linear intercept (Lm) in 4 lungs removed from patients with very severe (GOLD-4) COPD and 4 unused donor lungs that served as controls.