Estimation of coronary length-volume allometric relations of human arteries in vivo using CT

Assessing the individual geometry of the coronary arteries in a patient can help to explain diffuse artery disease. Some allometric functions, relating arterial length and volume, were verified in porcine arteries and human autopsies but not in vivo. In this work we use skeletonization methods on MSCT images to render the whole coronary tree in healthy and cardiovascular patients. Twenty patients with and without coronary artery disease were recruited. The coronary was segmented with minimum user intervention. Vessels were separated and measured. A 3D coronary map was individually calculated. The allometric length-volume function L=k(v)V(β) was evaluated in each patient and plotted in a Log-Log scale. The coefficient k(v) ranged 1.00 ± 0.35. Slopes ranged β = 0.69-0.88 and seemed to overlap in the scatter Log plot. The analysis of covariance verified this perception and concluded that lines were parallel. In other words, the allometric function stood for all patients. Values were not different from other studies in humans and pigs. The combination of multislice CT with morphological extraction algorithms was effective to extract allometric functions from coronary arteries in patients and can be easily applied in the clinic.