Reconstruction of Partially Broken Vascular Structures in X-Ray Images via Vesselness-Loss-Based Multi-Scale Generative Adversarial Networks

Coronary artery procedures are primarily performed based on X-ray angiography images. However, coronary arteries in X-ray images are often partially broken, complicating diagnoses and procedures owing to lack of visibility. In this paper, we propose a fully automatic method to restore locally broken parts of coronary arteries in X-ray images without using any external information, such as computed tomography images. To this end, we design a new multi-scale generative adversarial network and a vesselness-loss function. The proposed method is optimized for focus on elongated structures and can be utilized in various clinical applications. The proposed method is evaluated and compared with four other existing methods using the performance metrics, PSNR, MSE, and SSIM, and the result shows 34.3, 0.18, and 0.91 averages, respectively for each metric. Based on the performance result, the blocked regions are plausibly reconstructed into such original shapes of blood vessels, which can aid in image-based guiding catheter manipulation during coronary artery procedures. Eventually, the proposed method can be utilized in various clinical applications, e.g., image-based planning and guidance of coronary procedures and prior simulation of results.