Angiography method and apparatus
US6842638B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Nov 13, 2001 |
| Grant date | Jan 11, 2005 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Dec 30, 2022 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06T2207/30172
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A two-dimensional slice formed of pixels (376) is extracted from the angiographic image (76) after enhancing the vessel edges by second order spatial differentiation (78). Imaged vascular structures in the slice are located (388) and flood-filled (384). The edges of the filled regions are iteratively eroded to identify vessel centers (402). The extracting, locating, flood-filling, and eroding is repeated (408) for a plurality of slices to generate a plurality of vessel centers (84) that are representative of the vascular system. A vessel center (88) is selected, and a corresponding vessel direction (92) and orthogonal plane (94) are found. The vessel boundaries (710) in the orthogonal plane (94) are identified by iteratively propagating (704) a closed geometric contour arranged about the vessel center (88). The selecting, finding, and estimating are repeated for the plurality of vessel centers (84). The estimated vessel boundaries (710) are interpolated (770) to form a vascular tree (780).
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.