Raman Raghav, Napel Sandy, Rubin Geoffrey D
Department of Radiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, 300 Pasteur Drive, Stanford, CA 94305-5105, USA.
Radiology. 2003 Oct;229(1):255-60. doi: 10.1148/radiol.2291020370. Epub 2003 Aug 27.
The authors developed and evaluated a method to produce curved-slab maximum intensity projections (MIPs) through blood vessels that semiautomatically excludes soft tissue and bone. Results obtained with the algorithm were compared with those obtained with rectangular-slab MIPs by using computed tomographic (CT) data from four patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms. Curved-slab MIPs exhibited increased mean vessel-to-perivascular tissue contrast of 55.1 HU (36%), allowed a 10% increase in contrast-to-noise ratio, and decreased apparent vessel narrowing by 0.12-1.09 mm, without increasing processing time. Curved-slab MIPs may also include multiple vessels in a single image, thereby improving interpretation efficiency by reducing the number of MIPs required in these patients from eight to three.
