Identifying vascular features with orientation specific filters and B-spline snakes

The authors present several new techniques for determining vessel boundaries, or enhancing their centerline features. A bank of S-Gabor filter pairs are used to create an energy field. Vessels are represented by B-spline snakes, and depending on whether vascular boundaries or centerlines are to be determined, they are optimized on appropriate filter outputs. The optimization engine is a new dynamic programming algorithm which determines the parametric curve of least energy, and can be used to optimize B-spline curves of any order. Results are demonstrated on a number of common angiograms including preand post-angioplasty coronary angiograms, and a carotid arteriogram.<<ETX>>