Fractal Analysis of the Pulmonary Arterial Tree in Pulmonary Hypertension.

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is an insidious disorder that can occur in isolation or as a result of various other pulmonary and systemic conditions. If left untreated PH may progress to right heart failure and death. Numerous tests are suggestive but not diagnostic of PH including cardiac echo, pulmonary function testing and chest x-ray. Definitive diagnosis requires right heart catheterization that is invasive, costly and time consuming. The fractal dimension (FD) is an index of the space-filling properties of an object so that the closer the dimension is to the topological dimension in which the object is embedded, the greater the space filling properties. No investigations have been performed to analyze the fractal dimension of pulmonary arteries in patients with PH. We propose to confirm that normotensive and hypertensive pulmonary arteries are fractal, as well as define if the FD correlates to disease severity when compared to available data such as six-minute walk and right heart catheterization measurements.