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Abstract

Reliable and reproducible estimation of vessel centerlines and reference surfaces is an important step for the assessment of luminal lesions. Conventional methods are commonly developed for quantitative analysis of the “straight” vessel segments and have limitations in defining the precise location of the centerline and the reference lumen surface for both the main vessel and the side branches in the vicinity of bifurcations. To address this, we propose the estimation of the centerline and the reference surface through the registration of an elliptical cross-sectional tube to the desired constituent vessel in each major bifurcation of the arterial tree. The proposed method works directly on the mesh domain, thus alleviating the need for image upsampling, usually required in conventional volume domain approaches. We demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the method on both synthetic images and coronary CT angiograms. Experimental results show that the new method is capable of estimating vessel centerlines and reference surfaces with a high degree of agreement to those obtained through manual delineation. The centerline errors are reduced by an average of 62.3% in the regions of the bifurcations, when compared to the results of the initial solution obtained through the use of mesh contraction method.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2012 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Publisher Keywords:	Bifurcation, Centreline Estimation, CTA, Coronary Arteries, Elliptic Cross Sections, Shape analysis, Tubular Deformable Model
Subjects:	R Medicine > RC Internal medicine
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Engineering
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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