Robust vessel segmentation

Susanne Bock; Caroline Kühnel; Tobias Boskamp; Heinz-Otto Peitgen

doi:10.1117/12.768555

17 March 2008 Robust vessel segmentation

Susanne Bock, Caroline Kühnel, Tobias Boskamp, Heinz-Otto Peitgen

Proceedings Volume 6915, Medical Imaging 2008: Computer-Aided Diagnosis; 691539 (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.768555
Event: Medical Imaging, 2008, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

In the context of cardiac applications, the primary goal of coronary vessel analysis often consists in supporting the diagnosis of vessel wall anomalies, such as coronary plaque and stenosis. Therefore, a fast and robust segmentation of the coronary tree is a very important but challenging task. We propose a new approach for coronary artery segmentation. Our method is based on an earlier proposed progressive region growing. A new growth front monitoring technique controls the segmentation and corrects local leakage by retrospective detection and removal of leakage artifacts. While progressively reducing the region growing threshold for the whole image, the growing process is locally analyzed using criteria based on the assumption of tubular, gradually narrowing vessels. If a voxel volume limit or a certain shape constraint is exceeded, the growing process is interrupted. Voxels affected by a failed segmentation are detected and deleted from the result. To avoid further processing at these positions, a large neighborhood is blocked for growing. Compared to a global region growing without local correction, our new local growth control and the adapted correction can deal with contrast decrease even in very small coronary arteries. Furthermore, our algorithm can efficiently handle noise artifacts and partial volume effects near the myocardium. The enhanced segmentation of more distal vessel parts was tested on 150 CT datasets. Furthermore, a comparison between the pure progressive region growing and our new approach was conducted.

Citation Download Citation

Susanne Bock, Caroline Kühnel, Tobias Boskamp, and Heinz-Otto Peitgen "Robust vessel segmentation", Proc. SPIE 6915, Medical Imaging 2008: Computer-Aided Diagnosis, 691539 (17 March 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.768555

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