Manniesing Rashindra, Viergever Max A, Niessen Wiro J
Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam, 3015 GE Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2007 Mar;26(3):309-16. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2006.891503.
An approach to 3-D vessel axis tracking based on surface evolution is presented. The main idea is to guide the evolution of the surface by analyzing its skeleton topology during evolution, and imposing shape constraints on the topology. For example, the intermediate topology can be processed such that it represents a single vessel segment, a bifurcation, or a more complex vascular topology. The evolving surface is then reinitialized with the newly found topology. Reinitialization is a crucial step since it creates probing behavior of the evolving front, encourages the segmentation process to extract the vascular structure of interest and reduces the risk on leaking of the curve into the background. The method was evaluated in two computed tomography angiography applications: 1) extracting the internal carotid arteries including the region in which they traverse through the skull base, which is challenging due to the proximity of bone structures and overlap in intensity values; 2) extracting the carotid bifurcations including many cases in which they are severely stenosed and contain calcifications. The vessel axis was found in 90% (18/20 internal carotids in ten patients) and 70% (14/20 carotid bifurcations in a different set of ten patients) of the cases.
提出了一种基于表面演化的三维血管轴线跟踪方法。主要思想是在演化过程中通过分析表面的骨架拓扑结构来引导表面的演化，并对拓扑结构施加形状约束。例如，可以对中间拓扑结构进行处理，使其表示单个血管段、分叉或更复杂的血管拓扑结构。然后用新发现的拓扑结构对演化表面进行重新初始化。重新初始化是一个关键步骤，因为它会产生演化前沿的探测行为，鼓励分割过程提取感兴趣的血管结构，并降低曲线泄漏到背景中的风险。该方法在两个计算机断层血管造影应用中进行了评估：1）提取颈内动脉，包括它们穿过颅底的区域，由于骨骼结构的接近和强度值的重叠，这具有挑战性；2）提取颈动脉分叉，包括许多严重狭窄并含有钙化的情况。在90%（十名患者中的18条颈内动脉）和70%（另一组十名患者中的14个颈动脉分叉）的病例中找到了血管轴线。
