Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society (한국컴퓨터그래픽스학회논문지)

Korea Computer Graphics Society (한국컴퓨터그래픽스학회)
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Automatic Extraction of Ascending Aorta and Ostium in Cardiac CT Angiography Images

심장 CT 혈관 조영 영상에서 대동맥 및 심문 자동 검출

  • Kim, Hye-Ryun (Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Ewha Womans University) ;
  • Kang, Mi-Sun (Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Ewha Womans University) ;
  • Kim, Myoung-Hee (Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Ewha Womans University)
  • 김혜련 (이화여자대학교 컴퓨터공학과) ;
  • 강미선 (이화여자대학교 컴퓨터공학과) ;
  • 김명희 (이화여자대학교 컴퓨터공학과)
  • Received : 2017.02.06
  • Accepted : 2017.03.07
  • Published : 2017.03.07
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Abstract

Computed tomographic angiography (CTA) is widely used in the diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease because it shows not only the whole anatomical structure of the cardiovascular three-dimensionally but also provides information on the lesion and type of plaque. However, due to the large size of the image, there is a limitation in manually extracting coronary arteries, and related researches are performed to automatically extract coronary arteries accurately. As the coronary artery originate from the ascending aorta, the ascending aorta and ostium should be detected to extract the coronary tree accurately. In this paper, we propose an automatic segmentation for the ostium as a starting structure of coronary artery in CTA. First, the region of the ascending aorta is initially detected by using Hough circle transform based on the relative position and size of the ascending aorta. Second, the volume of interest is defined to reduce the search range based on the initial area. Third, the refined ascending aorta is segmented by using a two-dimensional geodesic active contour. Finally, the two ostia are detected within the region of the refined ascending aorta. For the evaluation of our method, we measured the Euclidean distance between the result and the ground truths annotated manually by medical experts in 20 CTA images. The experimental results showed that the ostia were accurately detected.

심장 CT 혈관 조영 영상은 심혈관의 전체 해부학 구조를 3D 로 보여줄 뿐 아니라 병변의 정보를 제공하기 때문에 관상동맥 질환 진단 및 치료에 많이 사용되고 있다. 하지만 영상의 방대한 크기로 인해 수동으로 정보를 추출하는 데는 한계가 있어 자동으로 심혈관을 정확하게 추출하는 연구들이 활발히 진행되고 있다. 심혈관 자동 추출 알고리즘을 개발하는데 있어 심혈관의 시작점인 상행대동맥의 심문을 검출하는 방법은 필수적인 부분이다. 본 논문에서는 심혈관의 시작점인 심문을 분할하는 방법을 제안한다. 첫째, 상행대동맥의 크기와 위치를 고려한 허프변환으로 대동맥 초기영역을 검출한다. 둘째, 초기영역을 기반으로 탐색범위를 줄일 수 있도록 관심 볼륨 영역을 설정한다. 셋째, 지오데식 활성외곽선 모델을 기반으로 정제된 대동맥 영역을 검출한다. 마지막으로 검출된 대동맥 영역에서 심문을 분할한다. 제안방법의 평가를 위해 20 개의 심장 CT 혈관 조영 영상에서 전문가가 수동으로 표기한 시작점과 비교 분석하였다. 실험 결과 제안방법을 통해 시작점이 제대로 추출 됨을 확인할 수 있었다.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

Grant : 개인 건강정보 기반 개방형 ICT 힐링 플랫폼 기술 개발

Supported by : 정보통신기술진흥센터

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