3D reconstruction of coronary arteries and atherosclerotic plaques based on computed tomography angiography images

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to present a new semi-automated methodology for threedimensional (3D) reconstruction of coronary arteries and their plaque morphology using Computed Tomography Angiography (CTA) images. The methodology is summarized in seven stages: pre-processing of the acquired CTA images, extraction of the vessel tree centerline, estimation of a weight function for lumen, outer wall and calcified plaque, lumen segmentation, outer wall segmentation, plaque detection, and finally 3D surfaces construction.The methodology was evaluated using both expert's manual annotations and estimations of a recently presented Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) reconstruction method. As far as the manual annotation validation process is concerned, the mean value of the comparison metrics for the 3D segmentation were 0.749 and 1.746 for the Dice coefficient and Hausdorff distance, respectively. On the other hand, the correlation coefficients for the degree of stenosis 1, the degree of stenosis 2, the plaque burden, the minimal lumen area and the minimal lumen diameter, when comparing the derived from the proposed methodology 3D models with the IVUS reconstructed models, were 0.79, 0.77, 0.75, 0.85, 0.81, respectively. The proposed methodology is an innovative approach for reconstruction of coronary arteries, since it provides 3D models of the lumen, the outer wall and the CP plaques, using the minimal user interaction.Its first implementation demonstrated that it provides an accurate reconstruction of coronary arteries and thus, it may have a wide clinical applicability.

Extraction of Coronary Atherosclerotic Plaques From Computed Tomography Imaging: A Review of Recent Methods

“…We found 17 papers focused on the 3D methods of coronary plaques extraction and reconstruction, including 16 original studies ( 28 – 33 , 47 , 51 – 56 , 61 , 62 , 64 ), and a review paper ( 72 ). The same method was adopted in Athanasiou et al ( 73 ) and Sakellarios et al ( 52 ).…”

Simulation of atherosclerotic plaque growth using computational biomechanics and patient-specific data

“…3D reconstruction of the coronary lumen and outer vessel wall was performed using an in-house software, which provided measurements of lumen area, plaque volume and plaque burden as previously described and validated 12,13 . Finally, baseline and follow-up CTCA scans were co-registered using landmarks such as the bifurcations and calcified objects.…”

A comparison of three multimodality coronary 3D reconstruction methods

“…CCTA is an innovative methodology for the diagnosis of CAD and the prediction or future events through the 3D reconstruction of the whole arterial tree. This method is based on filtered back projection (FBP) and includes the following steps [11]: (i) the selection of the region of interest (ROI) using a Frangi Vesselness filter on the preprocessed CCTA images, (ii) the removal of the "blooming effect" from the lumen and outer wall, as well as, for the highly calcified (Ca) and non-calcified (NCa) plaques, where the extraction of the aforementioned characteristics is based on the Hounsfield Units (HU) scale, (iii) the plaque segmentation which is performed through an algorithm that is based on the level set approach which accounts for Ca objects of significant size, and (iv) in the final step the segmented surfaces are connected to construct the 3D models for the lumen, outer wall and plaques.…”