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Abstract

A method for in-room computer reconstruction of a three-dimensional (3-D) coronary vascular tree from routine biplane angiograms acquired at arbitrary angles and without using calibration objects. The method includes seven major steps: (1) acquisition of two standard angiogram sequences by use of a single-plane or biplane imaging system, (2) identification of 2-D coronary vascular trees and feature extractions including bifurcation points, directional vectors, vessel centerlines, and construction of vessel hierarchy in the two images, (3) determination of transformation in terms of a rotation matrix R and a translation vector t based on the extracted vessel bifurcation points and directional vectors, (4) establishment of vessel centerline correspondence, (5) calculation of the skeleton of 3-D coronary vascular trees, (6) rendering of 3-D coronary vascular tree with associated gantry angulation, and (7) calculation of optimal view(s) and 3-D QCA as quantitative measures associated with the selected vascular segment(s) of interest. The calculation of optimal views includes determination of 2-D projections of the reconstructed 3-D vascular tree so as to minimize foreshortening of a selected vascular segment, overlap of a selected vascular segment or both overlap and foreshortening of a selected arterial segment.

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