title: Partition-based extraction of cerebral arteries from CT angiography with emphasis on adaptive tracking.
abstract: In this paper a method to extract cerebral arteries from computed tomographic angiography (CTA) is proposed. Since CTA shows both bone and vessels, the examination of vessels is a difficult task. In the upper part of the brain, the arteries of main interest are not close to bone and can be well segmented out by thresholding and simple connected-component analysis. However in the lower part the separation is challenging due to the spatial closeness of bone and vessels and their overlapping intensity distributions. In this paper a CTA volume is partitioned into two sub-volumes according to the spatial relationship between bone and vessels. In the lower sub-volume, the concerning arteries are extracted by tracking the center line and detecting the border on each cross-section. The proposed tracking method can be characterized by the adaptive properties to the case of cerebral arteries in CTA. These properties improve the tracking continuity with less user-interaction.
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-742, Korea. hjshim@diehard.snu.ac.kr
authors.forename: Hackjoon
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shim
authors.forename: Il Dong
authors.initials: ID
authors.lastname: Yun
authors.forename: Kyoung Mu
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Sang Uk
authors.initials: SU
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D002533:Cerebral Angiography / Q000379:methods*; D002536:Cerebral Arteries / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D011856:Radiographic Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D011857:Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*