Hyper Association Graph Matching with Uncertainty Quantification for Coronary Artery Semantic Labeling

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the primary causes leading to death worldwide. Accurate extraction of individual arterial branches on invasive coronary angiograms (ICA) is important for stenosis detection and CAD diagnosis. However, deep learning-based models face challenges in generating semantic segmentation for coronary arteries due to the morphological similarity among different types of coronary arteries. To address this challenge, we propose an innovative approach using the hyper association graph-matching neural network with uncertainty quantification (HAGMN-UQ) for coronary artery semantic labeling on ICAs. The graph-matching procedure maps the arterial branches between two individual graphs, so that the unlabeled arterial segments are classified by the labeled segments, and the coronary artery semantic labeling is achieved. By incorporating the anatomical structural loss and uncertainty, our model achieved an accuracy of 0.9345 for coronary artery semantic labeling with a fast inference speed, leading to an effective and efficient prediction in real-time clinical decision-making scenarios.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

Semantic Segmentation to Extract Coronary Arteries in Invasive Coronary Angiograms

Accurate semantic segmentation of each coronary artery using invasive coronary angiography (ICA) is important for stenosis assessment and coronary artery disease (CAD) diagnosis. In this paper, we propose a multi-step semantic segmentation algorithm based on analyzing arterial segments extracted from ICAs. The proposed algorithm firstly extracts the entire arterial binary mask (binary vascular tree) using a deep learning-based method. Then we extract the centerline of the binary vascular tree and separate it into different arterial segments. Finally, by extracting the underlying arterial topology, position, and pixel features, we construct a powerful coronary artery segment classifier based on a support vector machine. Each arterial segment is classified into the left coronary artery (LCA), left anterior descending (LAD), and other types of arterial segments. The proposed method was tested on a dataset with 225 ICAs and achieved a mean accuracy of 70.33% for the multi-class artery classification and a mean intersection over union of 0.6868 for semantic segmentation of arteries. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, which provides impressive performance for analyzing the individual arteries in ICAs

Semantic Segmentation to Extract Coronary Arteries in Invasive Coronary Angiograms

Accurate semantic segmentation of each coronary artery using invasive coronary angiography (ICA) is important for stenosis assessment and coronary artery disease (CAD) diagnosis. In this paper, we propose a multi-step semantic segmentation algorithm based on analyzing arterial sements extraced from ICAs. The proposed algorithm firstly extracts the entire arterial binary mask (binary vascular tree) using a deep learning-based method. Then we extract the centerline of the binary vascular tree and separate it into different arterial segments. Finally, by extracting the underlyingarterial topology, position, and pixel features, we construct a powerful coronary artery segment classifier based on a support vector machine. Each arterial segment is classified into the left coronary artery (LCA), left anterior descending (LAD), and other types of arterial segments. The proposed method was tested on a dataset with 225 ICAs and achieved a mean accuracy of 70.33% for the multi-class artery classification and a mean intersection over union of 0.6868 for semantic segmentation of arteries. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, which provides impressive performance for analyzing the individual arteries in ICAs

Semantic Segmentation to Extract Coronary Arteries in Invasive Coronary Angiograms

Accurate semantic segmentation of each coronary artery using invasive coronary angiography (ICA) is important for stenosis assessment and coronary artery disease (CAD) diagnosis. In this paper, we propose a multi-step semantic segmentation algorithm based on analyzing arterial sements extraced from ICAs. The proposed algorithm firstly extracts the entire arterial binary mask (binary vascular tree) using a deep learning-based method. Then we extract the centerline of the binary vascular tree and separate it into different arterial segments. Finally, by extracting the underlyingarterial topology, position, and pixel features, we construct a powerful coronary artery segment classifier based on a support vector machine. Each arterial segment is classified into the left coronary artery (LCA), left anterior descending (LAD), and other types of arterial segments. The proposed method was tested on a dataset with 225 ICAs and achieved a mean accuracy of 70.33% for the multi-class artery classification and a mean intersection over union of 0.6868 for semantic segmentation of arteries. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, which provides impressive performance for analyzing the individual arteries in ICAs

Deep Learning for Medical Image Segmentation using Prior Knowledge and Topology

Image segmentation refers to the division of a digital image into distinct segments or groups of pixels/voxels. However, most of the existing deep learning approaches lack the utilization of prior knowledge, such as shape information, which could improve segmentation accuracy. In addition, conventional image segmentation frequently falls short in preserving intricate spatial details, motivating the innovation of strategies for multi-scaled feature integration. Furthermore, traditional image segmentation methods primarily concentrate on pixel-level or region-level analysis. However, given the inherent morphological similarities among various image objects, the significance of topology information surpasses that of pixel-level data in the realm of medical image semantic segmentation, and the incorporation of topology information for image segmentation is important. The first aim of this dissertation is to incorporate shape priors into medical image segmentation. A shape-prior-V-Net (SP-V-Net) is proposed, which contains a shape transformation module to refine the segmentation results according to the shape prior. SP-V-Net has been applied to lung segmentation and proximal femur segmentation. The second aim aims to improve image segmentation by leveraging hierarchical features. Two approaches are proposed: the feature pyramid U-Net++ (FP-U-Net++), which dynamically aggregates the feature pyramid in the decoder of U-Net ++, and the multi-input multi-scale U-Net (MIMS U-Net), which integrates the features in the encoder of the U-Net. The third aim explores topology-based image semantic segmentation using graph neural networks. Three graph-matching networks have been developed, including association graph-based, edge attention graph matching, and hyper-association graph matching networks. The proposed graph-matching networks convert the graph-matching problems into a vertex classification problem using an association graph, where the positive vertex indicates the nodes from two individual graphs are matched. These models were applied to coronary artery semantic labeling on invasive coronary angiograms. Moreover, this study presents a pioneering approach for topology-based image semantic labeling using graph matching. The successful completion of these aims contributes technically accurate and clinically applicable algorithms and techniques for medical image segmentation. The outcomes of this dissertation provide valuable tools for the medical imaging and computer vision communities, advancing the field and improving patient care through accurate and efficient medical image segmentation

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

Automatic 3D Reconstruction of Coronary Artery Centerlines from Monoplane X-ray Angiogram Images

We present a new method for the fully automatic 3D reconstruction of the coronary artery centerlines, using two X-ray angiogram projection images from a single rotating monoplane acquisition system. During the first stage, the input images are smoothed using curve evolution techniques. Next, a simple yet efficient multiscale method, based on the information of the Hessian matrix, for the enhancement of the vascular structure is introduced. Hysteresis thresholding using different image quantiles, is used to threshold the arteries. This stage is followed by a thinning procedure to extract the centerlines. The resulting skeleton image is then pruned using morphological and pattern recognition techniques to remove non-vessel like structures. Finally, edge-based stereo correspondence is solved using a parallel evolutionary optimization method based on f symbiosis. The detected 2D centerlines combined with disparity map information allow the reconstruction of the 3D vessel centerlines. The proposed method has been evaluated on patient data sets for evaluation purposes