Development and clinical evaluation of an online procedure for lesion length measurement in coronary intervention

Presents a procedure for online measurement of a coronary segment length and its clinical evaluation during stent implantation. The procedure calculates the spatial segmental axis from a biplane angiogram and the corresponding projection data. The images and data are captured and combined by an automatic acquisition system. Simple delineation of the proximal and distal segment sites in each image provides the spatial segmental length online. In a clinical evaluation the measured length of 116 stents or carrier balloons was compared with the listed length. The mean /spl plusmn/SD of the time frame, projectional foreshortening and length error were calculated. The device length imaged with a mean projectional foreshortening of 17/spl plusmn/17% was measured within 18/spl plusmn/4 s. The overall absolute length error was 0.58/spl plusmn/0.41 mm. The procedure yields the accurate length of coronary segments within a short computation time taking projectional foreshortening into account. It promises to effectively optimize coronary stent implantation.