A quantitative index for the measurement of the tortuosity of blood vessels.

We propose a novel index for quantitating arterial tortuosity, based on second differences of the coordinates of the vessel midline. The index is independent of the magnification of the image and of sampling frequency. We have demonstrated its validity as an indicator of changes in morphology using simulated shapes. It is superior to two other putative indices based on vessel elongation and the variance of differences in the vessel midline coordinates, presented previously in the literature. The proposed index is easily generalised to three dimensions, allowing a true three-dimensional tortuosity index to be calculated from biplane angiograms or serial tomographic slices. It has a number of clinical applications. Preliminary data, using 82 aortograms from radiographic archives, showed a significant correlation between the tortuosity of the abdominal aorta and subject age (r=0.684, P<0.001). For this group, increased tortuosity was especially evident for subjects above 40 yr of age.

[1]  P. Dobrin,et al.  Mechanisms of arterial and aneurysmal tortuosity. , 1988, Surgery.

[2]  B Hillen,et al.  Arterial tortuosity in the femoropopliteal region during knee flexion: a magnetic resonance angiographic study. , 1995, Journal of anatomy.

[3]  O Smedby,et al.  Predilection of atherosclerosis for the inner curvature in the femoral artery. A digitized angiography study. , 1995, Arteriosclerosis, thrombosis, and vascular biology.

[4]  G. Dougherty,et al.  Quantitative assessment of abdominal aortic atherosclerosis observed in CT scans. , 1997, Computerized medical imaging and graphics : the official journal of the Computerized Medical Imaging Society.

[5]  Joseph J. Capowski,et al.  A numeric index based on spatial frequency for the tortuosity of retinal vessels and its application to plus disease in retinopathy of prematurity. , 1995 .

[6]  O Smedby,et al.  Two-dimensional tortuosity of the superficial femoral artery in early atherosclerosis. , 1993, Journal of vascular research.

[7]  R. Schroter,et al.  Atheroma and arterial wall shear - Observation, correlation and proposal of a shear dependent mass transfer mechanism for atherogenesis , 1971, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences.

[8]  R B Griepp,et al.  Computer-generated 3D representations of the aorta: a new tool in the management of aortic aneurysm patients. , 1994, The Thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon.

[9]  Andreas Wahle,et al.  Assessment of diffuse coronary artery disease by quantitative analysis of coronary morphology based upon 3-D reconstruction from biplane angiograms , 1995, IEEE Trans. Medical Imaging.

[10]  J. Sklansky,et al.  Estimating the 3D skeletons and transverse areas of coronary arteries from biplane angiograms. , 1988, IEEE transactions on medical imaging.

[11]  Paul A. Yushkevich,et al.  Segmentation, registration, and measurement of shape variation via image object shape , 1999, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[12]  G. Hutchins,et al.  Arterial geometry affects hemodynamics. A potential risk factor for athersoclerosis. , 1983, Atherosclerosis.

[13]  S. Nilsson,et al.  Changes in atheroma volume estimated from digitized femoral arteriograms. , 1990, Acta radiologica.

[14]  F L Wuyts,et al.  Elastic properties of human aortas in relation to age and atherosclerosis: a structural model. , 1995, Physics in medicine and biology.

[15]  B. Kimball,et al.  Angiographic features associated with acute coronary artery occlusion during elective angioplasty. , 1990, The Canadian journal of cardiology.

[16]  F Cheriet,et al.  Self-calibration of a biplane X-ray imaging system for an optimal three dimensional reconstruction. , 1999, Computerized medical imaging and graphics : the official journal of the Computerized Medical Imaging Society.

[17]  J C Ehrhardt.  Reduction of aliasing in modulation transfer function measurements. , 1986, Medical physics.