Abstract
This paper describes largely automated methods of creating connected, 3D vascular trees from individual vessels segmented from magnetic resonance angiograms. Vessel segmentation is initiated by user-supplied seed points, with automatic calculation of vessel skeletons as image intensity ridges and automatic estimation of vessel widths via medialness calculations. The tree-creation process employs a variant of the minimum spanning tree algorithm and evaluates image intensities at each proposed connection point. We evaluate the accuracy of nodal connections by registering a 3D vascular tree with 4 digital subtraction angiograms (DSAs) obtained from the same patient, and by asking two neuroradiologists to evaluate each nodal connection on each DSA view. No connection was judged incorrect. The approach permits new, clinically useful visualizations of the intracerebral vasculature.
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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Bullitt, E. et al. (1999). 3D Graph Description of the Intracerebral Vasculature from Segmented MRA and Tests of Accuracy by Comparison with X-ray Angiograms. In: Kuba, A., Šáamal, M., Todd-Pokropek, A. (eds) Information Processing in Medical Imaging. IPMI 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1613. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48714-X_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48714-X_23
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