Explorative Building of 3 D Vessel Tree Models 1 )

This paper addresses the problem of segmenting vessels and other tubular tree-like structures. The underlying work was done in the context of interventional radiology where new CT technologies yield 3D data of high quality depicting the heart. It is highly desirable to make this information available during actual intervention. Before registering the 3D data to a sequence of live angiography images a parametrical model of the choronary vessel tree has to be calculated from the CT data. The model is build by exploring the branching vessel tree starting from a single position and successively expanding through the vessels guided by a local deformable surface. The result is a tree of cylindrical segments each adapted to the vessel walls. It can then be registered to angiography images in a fast and robust way.