Coronary vein extraction in MSCT volumes using minimum cost path and geometrical moments

This work deals with the extraction of patient-specific coronary venous anatomy in preoperative multislice computed tomography (MSCT) volumes. A hybrid approach has been specifically designed for low-contrast vascular structure detection. It makes use of a minimum cost path technique with a Fast-Marching front propagation to extract the vessel centerline. A second procedure was applied to refine the position of the path and estimate the local radius along the vessel. This was achieved with an iterative multiscale algorithm based on geometrical moments. Parameter tuning was performed using a dedicated numerical phantom, and then the algorithm was applied to extract the coronary venous system. Results are provided on three MSCT volume sequences acquired for patients selected for a cardiac resynchronization therapy procedure. A visibility study was carried out by a medical expert who labeled venous segments on a set of 18 volumes. A comparison with two other Fast-Marching techniques and a geometrical moment based tracking method is also reported.