Chen Zikuan, Molloi Sabee
Department of Radiological Sciences, University of California, Medical Sciences I, B140, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
Comput Med Imaging Graph. 2003 Nov-Dec;27(6):469-79. doi: 10.1016/s0895-6111(03)00039-9.
This study presents an automatic method for 3D reconstruction of vascular trees using computed-tomography angiographic (CTA) images. The program starts with the CTA slices, performs a sequential procedure of 3D image formation, preprocessing, segmentation, thinning, skeleton pruning and tree construction. It ends with vascular trees along with quantitative data about the trees such as values of diameter, length and bifurcation angles. All the involved algorithms are presented with the emphasis given to the skeleton pruning and tree construction algorithms. The skeletons obtained using a 3D thinning algorithm may contain cycles, spurs, isolated sticks, and non-unit-width parts, which hinder tree construction. As a solution to this problem, a skeleton pruning and tree construction algorithm is proposed. At each stage of the automatic procedure, 3D rendering is provided for visual inspection of the computed results. In the final output, the constructed vascular trees are visualized by rendering the 3D trees and the 3D binary image together in a transparent display mode. The program is carried out in a fully automatic fashion, with a few default settings. Occasionally, user intervention is needed at the 3D segmentation stage to impose an appropriate threshold when the automatic 3D segmentation is obviously sub-optimal for vessel delineation. Experimental demonstrations on both coronary artery phantom and a cast of coronary artery tree of a swine animal model are provided.
本研究提出了一种利用计算机断层血管造影（CTA）图像对血管树进行三维重建的自动方法。该程序从CTA切片开始，执行三维图像形成、预处理、分割、细化、骨架修剪和树构建的顺序过程。它以血管树以及关于这些树的定量数据（如直径、长度和分叉角度值）结束。所有涉及的算法都有介绍，重点是骨架修剪和树构建算法。使用三维细化算法获得的骨架可能包含环、刺、孤立的枝桠和非单位宽度部分，这会阻碍树的构建。作为解决这个问题的方法，提出了一种骨架修剪和树构建算法。在自动过程的每个阶段都提供三维渲染，以便对计算结果进行视觉检查。在最终输出中，通过以透明显示模式一起渲染三维树和三维二值图像来可视化构建的血管树。该程序以全自动方式运行，有一些默认设置。偶尔，在三维分割阶段需要用户干预，以便在自动三维分割对于血管描绘明显次优时施加适当的阈值。提供了在冠状动脉模型和猪动物模型的冠状动脉树铸型上的实验演示。
