title: New approaches for the assessment of vessel sizes in quantitative (cardio-)vascular X-ray analysis.
abstract: This paper presents new approaches for the assessment of the arterial and reference diameters in (cardio-)vascular X-ray images, designed to overcome the problems experienced in conventional quantitative coronary and vascular angiography approaches. In single or "straight" vessel segments, the arterial and reference diameter directions were made independent of each other in order to be able to measure the minimal lumen diameter (MLD) more accurately, especially in curved vessel segments. For ostial segments, an extension of this approach was used, to allow measurement of ostial lesions in sidebranches more proximal than using conventional methods. Furthermore, two new bifurcation approaches were developed. The validation study shows that the straight segment approach results in significant smaller MLDs (on average 0.032 mm) and the ostial approach achieves on average an increase in %DS of 3.8% and an increase in lesion length of 0.59 mm due to loosening the directional constraint. The validation of our new bifurcation approaches in phantom data as well as clinical data shows only small differences between pre- and post-intervention measurements of the reference diameters outside the bifurcation core (errors smaller than 0.06 mm) and the bifurcation core area (errors smaller than 1.4% for phantom data). In summary, these new approaches have led to further improvements in the quantitative analyses of (cardio-)vascular X-ray angiographies.
authors.affiliation: Division of Image Processing (LKEB), Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, P.O. Box 9600, 2300 RC, Leiden, The Netherlands. J.P.Janssen@lumc.nl
authors.forename: Johannes P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Janssen
authors.forename: Andrei
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rares
authors.forename: Joan C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Tuinenburg
authors.forename: Gerhard
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Koning
authors.forename: Alexandra J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Lansky
authors.forename: Johan H C
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Reiber
mesh_terms: D017023:Coronary Angiography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D003331:Coronary Vessels / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011857:Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index