Adaptive edge localisation approach for quantitative coronary analysis

Lack of reliability, user dissatisfaction and errors in determining coronary vessel wall characteristics are challenging issues in quantitative coronary analysis (QCA). A new approach is proposed for QCA that tackles these issues. The proposed approach extracts the coronary vessel edges by applying dynamic programming techniques that use human-based decision criteria, adaptive edge detection and feature-based cost minimisation. This approach uses image gradient, image intensity, boundary continuity and adaptive thresholding to gain maximum quality assurance. The validation of this approach was conducted through modelled phantoms and real X-ray angiograms. The results show that the accuracies obtained were 0.0116mm and 0.06mm, respectively, and the precisions were 0.0263mm, and 0.04mm, respectively. The proposed approach is reliable, reproducible and user friendly and provides high precision compared with recently published results. Furthermore, the significance of the proposed approach and its limitations are also discussed.