A method for measuring tubular anatomical structures, for example lung airways, comprises isolating by at least one segmentation process a given tubular anatomical structure of interest and measuring at least one attribute of the structure of interest. A system for measuring lung airways using acquired image data is provided. The system comprises an imaging device for acquiring the image data and an image processing device coupled to the imaging device. The imaging processing device is configured for isolating by at least one segmentation process a given airway of interest, fitting an inner ellipse to an inner boundary of the given airway and an outer ellipse to an outer boundary of the airway structure using statistical techniques at a given point in the airway, and further configured for generating measurements of the given airway using the inner and outer ellipses.