Curvilinear structure enhancement with the polygonal path image - Application to guide-wire segmentation in X-ray fluoroscopy

Abstract

Curvilinear structures are common inmedical imaging, which typically require dedicated processing techniques.We present a new structure to process these, that we call the polygonal path image, denoted P. We derive from P some curvilinear structure enhancement and analysis algorithms. We show that P has some interesting properties: it generalizes several concepts found in other methods; it makes it possible to control the smoothness and length of the structures under study; and it can be computed efficiently. We estimate quantitatively its performance in the context of interventional cardiology for the detection of guide-wires in Xray images. We show that P is particularly well suited for this task where it appears to outperform previous state of the art techniques.