Computerized axial tomographic reconstruction of coronary tree cross sections from a small number of cineradiographic views.

Three-dimensional reconstruction of the coronary tree from a conventional cineangiographic study is limited, in part, by the small number of available cineangiographic views. The potential utility of a maximum entropy iterative algorithm (MENT) for reconstruction of myocardial planes perpendicular to the axis of cineangiographic rotation from a small number (n = 6-18) of cineangiographic views was tested in vitro. The coronary arteries of postmortem human, canine, and calf hearts were filled with a silicone/thorium oxide mold to simulate in vivo angiographic contrast. Thirty-five-millimeter cineradiographs of each heart were obtained at 10 degrees intervals over 180 degrees about a myocardial central axis of rotation under exposure conditions which simulated the clinical setting. Projection data were derived from cinedensitometric scans across the entire myocardial shadow, perpendicular to the axis of rotation in each view, after 512 X 512 digitization with a vidicon camera/digitizer interfaced to a VAX computer. Comparison of MENT-reconstructed images with corresponding anatomic myocardial cross sections indicate that as few as 6 to 12 views can be used to reconstruct the cross sections of the multiple coronary branches (n = 6-11) within a plane of reconstruction.