CT Ventilation Metrics Correlate With Spirometry in Healthy Adults

Chronic respiratory diseases and lung malignancies represent a substantial portion of the global disease burden, with lung cancer remaining the leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide [1, 2]. While high-resolution computed tomography (CT) and pulmonary function tests are standard for monitoring fibrotic interstitial lung diseases, these modalities are often limited by inter-observer variability and a lack of localized functional data [3]. Meta-analytic evidence involving 3,320 participants indicates that while serum biomarkers like Krebs von den Lungen-6 (KL-6) offer a pooled specificity of 0.90 (95% confidence interval: 0.85 to 0.93) for identifying fibrosis, they cannot provide the spatial resolution necessary to map regional physiological changes [3]. Traditional spirometry provides a useful global assessment of lung capacity, yet it frequently fails to identify localized areas of impairment that may precede systemic decline [4]. As clinical focus shifts toward personalized phenotyping, a process of identifying specific observable traits to tailor individual treatment, there is an increasing demand for objective, spatially resolved metrics of lung ventilation. A recent study addresses this clinical necessity by defining standardized reference intervals for ventilation quantified through paired CT imaging, offering physicians a quantitative tool to detect early regional lung dysfunction.