Abstract
BACKGROUND: This study aimed to evaluate lung growth by the quantitative assessment of intrapulmonary vascular volume on chest CT images. METHODS: All 1122 subjects were grouped with a 2-year age span. The intrapulmonary vessels volume (IPVV) was calculated for the total lung, the right lung, the left lung, and the individual lobes. The Locally Weighted Scatterplot Smoothing curve was used to fit all the points. The growth rate was calculated by taking the first-order derivative of IPVV to age. RESULTS: The growth rate of IPVV is high at birth (9.63 mL/year for boys and 7.48 mL/year for girls), decreases rapidly until 2 years old, and then shows a slow growth in childhood and the prepuberty period. The pubertal growth spurt begins at 9 years old; however, the peak growth rate of this spurt is greater and later for boys (10.85 mL/year at 13.62 years old) than for girls (6.98 mL/year at 11.84 years old). For the boys, the most obvious pubertal growth is the left lower lobe, followed by the right lower lobe and the left upper lobe. For the girls, the pubertal growth spurt can be seen only in the bilateral lower lobes. We present values corresponding to the median and six different centiles (0.10, 3.00%, 15.00%, 50.00%, 85.00%, 97.00%, 99.90%). CONCLUSIONS: The infant and the puberty period are two periods of rapid growth. The pubertal growth of IPVV lasted for a longer period in boys, with a greater and later peak growth rate than in girls. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12880-025-02023-2.