TRACKING-BASED SEGMENTATION AND VOLUME RENDERING FOR ASSESSING STENOSIS OF CORONARY ARTERIES IN MS-CTA IMAGES

Multi-slice spiral computed tomography angiography (MS-CTA) is emerging as a clinically robust modality for di-agnosis and surgical planning for coronary heart disease. To enable these tasks the coronary arteries must be seg-mented and visualised. This paper proposes the use of an improved tracking-based algorithm for segmenting the coronary artery network. The segmentation results are cou-pled with direct volume rendering allowing for the 3-D vi-sualisation of the degree of stenosis. We represent vessels using a generalised-cylinder model, which facilitates fast segmentation and the visualisation of vessel cross-sectional area. A number of synthetic and in vivo datasets are used to validate and demonstrate the approach