3D reconstruction of the deformable coronary tree skeleton from two X-ray angiographic views

The purpose of this study is to provide a 3D reconstruction of the skeleton of the coronary tree from two sequences of X-ray projections acquired on a standard single plane angiographic system. The aimed clinical application is the optimization of angles of views. The main steps of the proposed method are: automatic extraction of the arteries skeletons on both projections, vessels bifurcations detection and hierarchical description of each 2D skeleton, matching and 3D reconstruction of the main vessels axes. The reconstruction step is based on a deformable model, where the initial 3D curves representing the vessels are built using only a set of reference points and optimized according to the two projections so that the projections of the 3D curve fit the centerlines of the vessels.