Automatic 3D Model Generation based on a Matching of Adaptive Control Points

Abstract The use of a 3D model helps to diagnosis and accurately locate a disease where it is neither available, nor can be exactly measured in a 2D image. Therefore, highly accurate software for a 3D model of vessel is required for an accurate diagnosis of patients. We have generated standard vessel because the shape of the arterial is different for each individual vessel, where the standard vessel can be adjusted to suit individual vessel. In this paper, we propose a new approach for an automatic 3D model generation based on a matching of adaptive control points. The proposed method is carried out in three steps. First, standard and individual vessels are acquired. The standard vessel is acquired by a 3D model projection, while the individual vessel of the first segmented vessel bifurcation is obtained. Second is matching the corresponding control points between the standard and individual vessels, where a set of control and corner points are automatically extracted using the Harris corner detector. If control points exist between corner points in an individual vessel, it is adaptively interpolated in the corresponding standard vessel which is proportional to the distance ratio. And then, the control points of corresponding individual vessel match with those control points of standard vessel. Finally, we apply warping on the standard vessel to suit the individual vessel using the TPS (Thin Plate Spline) interpolation function. For experiments, we used angiograms of various patients from a coronary angiography in Sanggye Paik Hospital

Dynamic Analysis of X-ray Angiography for Image-Guided Coronary Interventions

Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is a minimally-invasive procedure for treating patients with coronary artery disease. PCI is typically performed with image guidance using X-ray angiograms (XA) in which coronary arter

Patient-specific in silico 3D coronary model in cardiac catheterisation laboratories

Coronary artery disease is caused by the buildup of atherosclerotic plaque in the coronary arteries, affecting the blood supply to the heart, one of the leading causes of death around the world. X-ray coronary angiography is the most common procedure for diagnosing coronary artery disease, which uses contrast material and x-rays to observe vascular lesions. With this type of procedure, blood flow in coronary arteries is viewed in real-time, making it possible to detect stenoses precisely and control percutaneous coronary interventions and stent insertions. Angiograms of coronary arteries are used to plan the necessary revascularisation procedures based on the calculation of occlusions and the affected segments. However, their interpretation in cardiac catheterisation laboratories presently relies on sequentially evaluating multiple 2D image projections, which limits measuring lesion severity, identifying the true shape of vessels, and analysing quantitative data. In silico modelling, which involves computational simulations of patient-specific data, can revolutionise interventional cardiology by providing valuable insights and optimising treatment methods. This paper explores the challenges and future directions associated with applying patient-specific in silico models in catheterisation laboratories. We discuss the implications of the lack of patient-specific in silico models and how their absence hinders the ability to accurately predict and assess the behaviour of individual patients during interventional procedures. Then, we introduce the different components of a typical patient-specific in silico model and explore the potential future directions to bridge this gap and promote the development and utilisation of patient-specific in silico models in the catheterisation laboratories

3D fusion between fluoroscopy angiograms and SPECT myocardial perfusion images to guide percutaneous coronary intervention

Background Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in stable coronary artery disease (CAD) is commonly triggered by abnormal myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI). However, due to the possibilities of multivessel disease, serial stenoses and variability of coronary artery perfusion distribution, an opportunity exists to better align anatomic stenosis with perfusion abnormalities to improve revascularization decisions. This study aims to develop a multi-modality fusion approach to assist decision-making for PCI. Methods and Results Coronary arteries from fluoroscopic angiography (FA) were reconstructed into 3D artery anatomy. Left ventricular (LV) epicardial surface was extracted from SPECT. The artery anatomy and epicardial surface were non-rigidly fused. The accuracy of the 3D fusion was evaluated via both computer simulation and real patient data. Simulated FA and MPI were integrated and then compared with the ground truth from a digital phantom. The distance-based mismatch errors between simulated fluoroscopy and phantom arteries were 1.86 ± 1.43 mm for left coronary arteries (LCA) and 2.21 ± 2.50 mm for right coronary arteries (RCA). FA and SPECT images in 30 patients were integrated and then compared with the ground truth from CT angiograms. The distance-based mismatch errors between the fluoroscopy and CT arteries were 3.84 ± 3.15 mm for LCA and 5.55 ± 3.64 mm for RCA. The presence of the corresponding fluoroscopy and CT arteries in the AHA-17-segment model agreed well with a Kappa value of 0.91 (CI 0.89-0.93) for LCA and a Kappa value of 0.80 (CI 0.67-0.92) for RCA. Conclusions Our fusion approach is technically accurate to assist PCI decision-making and is clinically feasible to be used in the catheterization laboratory. Future studies are necessary to determine if fusion improves PCI-related outcomes

Acceleration of Subtractive Non-contrast-enhanced Magnetic Resonance Angiography

Although contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (CE-MRA) is widely established as a clinical examination for the diagnosis of human vascular diseases, non-contrast-enhanced MRA (NCE-MRA) techniques have drawn increasing attention in recent years. NCE-MRA is based on the intrinsic physical properties of blood and does not require the injection of any exogenous contrast agents. Subtractive NCE-MRA is a class of techniques that acquires two image sets with different vascular signal intensity, which are later subtracted to generate angiograms. The long acquisition time is an important drawback of NCE-MRA techniques, which not only limits the clinical acceptance of these techniques but also renders them sensitive to artefacts from patient motion. Another problem for subtractive NCE-MRA is the unwanted residual background signal caused by different static background signal levels on the two raw image sets. This thesis aims at improving subtractive NCE-MRA techniques by addressing both these limitations, with a particular focus on three-dimensional (3D) femoral artery fresh blood imaging (FBI). The structure of the thesis is as follows: Chapter 1 describes the anatomy and physiology of the vascular system, including the characteristics of arteries and veins, and the MR properties and flow characteristics of blood. These characteristics are the foundation of NCE-MRA technique development. Chapter 2 introduces commonly used diagnostic angiographic methods, particularly CE-MRA and NCE-MRA. Current NCE-MRA techniques are reviewed and categorised into different types. Their principles, implementations and limitations are summarised. Chapter 3 describes imaging acceleration theories including compressed sensing (CS), parallel imaging (PI) and partial Fourier (PF). The Split Bregman algorithm is described as an efficient CS reconstruction method. The SPIRiT reconstruction for PI and homodyne detection for PF are also introduced and combined with Split Bregman to form the basis of the reconstruction strategy for undersampled MR datasets. Four image quality metrics are presented for evaluating the quality of reconstructed images. In Chapter 4, an intensity correction method is proposed to improve background suppression for subtractive NCE-MRA techniques. Residual signals of background tissues are removed by performing a weighted subtraction, in which the weighting factor is obtained by a robust regression method. Image sparsity can also be increased and thereby potentially benefit CS reconstruction in the following chapters. Chapter 5 investigates the optimal k-space sampling patterns for the 3D accelerated femoral artery FBI sequence. A variable density Poisson-disk with a fully sampled centre region and missing partial Fourier fractions is employed for k-space undersampling in the ky-kz plane. Several key parameters in sampling pattern design, such as partial Fourier sampling ratios, fully sampled centre region size and density decay factor, are evaluated and optimised. Chapter 6 introduces several reconstruction strategies for accelerated subtractive NCE-MRA. A new reconstruction method, k-space subtraction with phase and intensity correction (KSPIC), is developed. By performing subtraction in k-space, KSPIC can exploit the sparsity of subtracted angiogram data and potentially improve the reconstruction performance. A phase correction procedure is used to restore the polarity of negative signals caused by subtraction. The intensity correction method proposed in Chapter 4 is also incorporated in KSPIC as it improves background suppression and thereby sparsity. The highly accelerated technique can be used not only to reduce the acquisition time, but also to enable imaging with increased resolution with no time penalty. A time-efficient high-resolution FBI technique is proposed in Chapter 7. By employing KSPIC and modifying the flow-compensation/spoiled gradients, the image matrix size can be increased from 256×256 to up to 512×512 without prolonging the acquisition time. Chapter 8 summarises the overall achievements and limitations of this thesis, as well as outlines potential future research directions.Cambridge Trust China Scholarship Council Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust National Institute of Health Research, Cambridge Biomedical Research Cente

Coronary Artery Segmentation and Motion Modelling

Conventional coronary artery bypass surgery requires invasive sternotomy and the use of a cardiopulmonary bypass, which leads to long recovery period and has high infectious potential. Totally endoscopic coronary artery bypass (TECAB) surgery based on image guided robotic surgical approaches have been developed to allow the clinicians to conduct the bypass surgery off-pump with only three pin holes incisions in the chest cavity, through which two robotic arms and one stereo endoscopic camera are inserted. However, the restricted field of view of the stereo endoscopic images leads to possible vessel misidentification and coronary artery mis-localization. This results in 20-30% conversion rates from TECAB surgery to the conventional approach. We have constructed patient-specific 3D + time coronary artery and left ventricle motion models from preoperative 4D Computed Tomography Angiography (CTA) scans. Through temporally and spatially aligning this model with the intraoperative endoscopic views of the patient's beating heart, this work assists the surgeon to identify and locate the correct coronaries during the TECAB precedures. Thus this work has the prospect of reducing the conversion rate from TECAB to conventional coronary bypass procedures. This thesis mainly focus on designing segmentation and motion tracking methods of the coronary arteries in order to build pre-operative patient-specific motion models. Various vessel centreline extraction and lumen segmentation algorithms are presented, including intensity based approaches, geometric model matching method and morphology-based method. A probabilistic atlas of the coronary arteries is formed from a group of subjects to facilitate the vascular segmentation and registration procedures. Non-rigid registration framework based on a free-form deformation model and multi-level multi-channel large deformation diffeomorphic metric mapping are proposed to track the coronary motion. The methods are applied to 4D CTA images acquired from various groups of patients and quantitatively evaluated

Computerized Analysis of Magnetic Resonance Images to Study Cerebral Anatomy in Developing Neonates

The study of cerebral anatomy in developing neonates is of great importance for the understanding of brain development during the early period of life. This dissertation therefore focuses on three challenges in the modelling of cerebral anatomy in neonates during brain development. The methods that have been developed all use Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) as source data. To facilitate study of vascular development in the neonatal period, a set of image analysis algorithms are developed to automatically extract and model cerebral vessel trees. The whole process consists of cerebral vessel tracking from automatically placed seed points, vessel tree generation, and vasculature registration and matching. These algorithms have been tested on clinical Time-of- Flight (TOF) MR angiographic datasets. To facilitate study of the neonatal cortex a complete cerebral cortex segmentation and reconstruction pipeline has been developed. Segmentation of the neonatal cortex is not effectively done by existing algorithms designed for the adult brain because the contrast between grey and white matter is reversed. This causes pixels containing tissue mixtures to be incorrectly labelled by conventional methods. The neonatal cortical segmentation method that has been developed is based on a novel expectation-maximization (EM) method with explicit correction for mislabelled partial volume voxels. Based on the resulting cortical segmentation, an implicit surface evolution technique is adopted for the reconstruction of the cortex in neonates. The performance of the method is investigated by performing a detailed landmark study. To facilitate study of cortical development, a cortical surface registration algorithm for aligning the cortical surface is developed. The method first inflates extracted cortical surfaces and then performs a non-rigid surface registration using free-form deformations (FFDs) to remove residual alignment. Validation experiments using data labelled by an expert observer demonstrate that the method can capture local changes and follow the growth of specific sulcus

Digital ocular fundus imaging: a review

Ocular fundus imaging plays a key role in monitoring the health status of the human eye. Currently, a large number of imaging modalities allow the assessment and/or quantification of ocular changes from a healthy status. This review focuses on the main digital fundus imaging modality, color fundus photography, with a brief overview of complementary techniques, such as fluorescein angiography. While focusing on two-dimensional color fundus photography, the authors address the evolution from nondigital to digital imaging and its impact on diagnosis. They also compare several studies performed along the transitional path of this technology. Retinal image processing and analysis, automated disease detection and identification of the stage of diabetic retinopathy (DR) are addressed as well. The authors emphasize the problems of image segmentation, focusing on the major landmark structures of the ocular fundus: the vascular network, optic disk and the fovea. Several proposed approaches for the automatic detection of signs of disease onset and progression, such as microaneurysms, are surveyed. A thorough comparison is conducted among different studies with regard to the number of eyes/subjects, imaging modality, fundus camera used, field of view and image resolution to identify the large variation in characteristics from one study to another. Similarly, the main features of the proposed classifications and algorithms for the automatic detection of DR are compared, thereby addressing computer-aided diagnosis and computer-aided detection for use in screening programs.Fundação para a Ciência e TecnologiaFEDErPrograma COMPET