Automatic heart peripheral vessels segmentation based on a normal MIP ray casting technique

Abstract

This paper introduces a new technique to detect the coronary arteries as well as other heart's peripheral vessels. After finding the location of the myocardium through a graph theoretic segmentation method, the algorithm models the heart with a biaxial ellipsoid. For each point of this ellipsoid, we compute the collection of intensities that are normal to the surface. This collection is then filtered to detect the cardiovascular structures. Ultimately, the vessels centerline points are detected using a vessel tracking algorithm, and linked together to form a complete coronary artery tree. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.