Extraction of vascular segments in coronarographic image by means of string matching

This work is aimed at the extraction of vascular structures and the formation of high level structural entities, i.e. vascular branches. The proposed approach is based on a string matching technique to associate contour lines. The lines are encoded using the direction of lines and the gradient direction. The measure of similarity between strings is performed using Wagner and Fischer's (1974) algorithm. A first step realizes a two string matching to associate contour lines. It is then extended to three string matching to form triplets (including the centerlines and contour lines).