3D bifurcations characterization for intra-cranial aneurysms prediction

An aneurysm is a vascular disorder represented by a ballooning of a blood vessel. The blood vessel’s wall is distorted by the blood flow, and a bulge forms there. When ruptured, the aneurysm may cause irreversible damage and could even lead to premature death. Intra-cranial aneurysms are the ones presenting the higher risks. In this work, thanks to a graph based approach, we detect the bifurcations located on the circle of Willis within brain mice cerebral vasculature. Once properly located in the 3D stack, we characterize the cerebral arteries bifurcations, i.e. we gather several properties of the bifurcation, such as their angles, or area cross section, in order to further estimate geometrical patterns that can favor the risk of occurrence of an intra-cranial aneurysm. Effectively, apart from genetic predisposition, and environmental risk factors (high blood pressure, smoking habits, ...) the anatomical disposition of the brain vasculature may influence the chances of an aneurysm to form. Our objectives in this paper is to obtain accurate measurements on the 3D bifurcations.