Reconstruction of coronary arteries from a single rotational X-ray projection sequence

IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2006 May;25(5):653-63. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2006.873224.

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases remain the primary cause of death in developed countries. In most cases, exploration of possibly underlying coronary artery pathologies is performed using X-ray coronary angiography. Current clinical routine in coronary angiography is directly conducted in two-dimensional projection images from several static viewing angles. However, for diagnosis and treatment purposes, coronary artery reconstruction is highly suitable. The purpose of this study is to provide physicians with a three-dimensional (3-D) model of coronary arteries, e.g., for absolute 3-D measures for lesion assessment, instead of direct projective measures deduced from the images, which are highly dependent on the viewing angle. In this paper, we propose a novel method to reconstruct coronary arteries from one single rotational X-ray projection sequence. As a side result, we also obtain an estimation of the coronary artery motion. Our method consists of three main consecutive steps: 1) 3-D reconstruction of coronary artery centerlines, including respiratory motion compensation; 2) coronary artery four-dimensional motion computation; 3) 3-D tomographic reconstruction of coronary arteries, involving compensation for respiratory and cardiac motions. We present some experiments on clinical datasets, and the feasibility of a true 3-D Quantitative Coronary Analysis is demonstrated.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Coronary Angiography / methods*
  • Humans
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional / methods*
  • Information Storage and Retrieval / methods
  • Pattern Recognition, Automated / methods*
  • Radiographic Image Enhancement / methods*
  • Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Subtraction Technique*