3D reconstruction of the coronary tree from two x-ray angiographic views

In this paper, we develop a method for the reconstruction of 3D coronary artery based on two perspective projections acquired on a standard single plane angiographic system in the same systole. Our reconstruction is based on the model of generalized cylinders, which are generated by sweeping a two-dimensional cross section along an axis in three-dimensional space. We restrict the cross section to be circular and always perpendicular to the tangent of the axis. Firstly, the vascular centerlines of the X-ray angiography images on both projections are semiautomatically extracted by multiscale vessel tracking using Gabor filters, and the radius of the coronary are also acquired simultaneously. Secondly, the relative geometry of the two projections is determined by the gantry information and 2D matching is realized through the epipolar geometry and the consistency of the vessels. Thirdly, we determine the three-dimensional (3D) coordinates of the identified object points from the image coordinates of the matched points and the calculated imaging system geometry. Finally, we link the consequent cross sections which are processed according to the radius and the direction information to obtain the 3D structure of the artery. The proposed 3D reconstruction method is validated on real data and is shown to perform robustly and accurately in the presence of noise.

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