Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications (한국정보과학회논문지:소프트웨어및응용)

Korean Institute of Information Scientists and Engineers (한국정보과학회)
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Automatic Lower Extremity Vessel Extraction based on Bone Elimination Technique in CT Angiography Images

CT 혈관 조영 영상에서 뼈 소거법 기반의 하지 혈관 자동 추출

  • 김수경 (서울여자대학교 컴퓨터학과) ;
  • 홍헬렌 (서울여자대학교 미디어학부)
  • Published : 2009.12.15
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Abstract

In this paper, we propose an automatic lower extremity vessel extraction based on rigid registration and bone elimination techniques in CT and CT angiography images. First, automatic partitioning of the lower extremity based on the anatomy is proposed to consider the local movement of the bone. Second, rigid registration based on distance map is performed to estimate the movement of the bone between CT and CT angiography images. Third, bone elimination and vessel masking techniques are proposed to remove bones in CT angiography image and to prevent the vessel near to bone from eroding. Fourth, post-processing based on vessel tracking is proposed to reduce the effect of misalignment and noises like a cartilage. For the evaluation of our method, we performed the visual inspection, accuracy measures and processing time. For visual inspection, the results of applying general subtraction, registered subtraction and proposed method are compared using volume rendering and maximum intensity projection. For accuracy evaluation, intensity distributions of CT angiography image, subtraction based method and proposed method are analyzed. Experimental result shows that bones are accurately eliminated and vessels are robustly extracted without the loss of other structure. The total processing time of thirteen patient datasets was 40 seconds on average.

본 논문에서는 CT 및 CT 혈관 조영 영상에서 강체 정합 및 뼈 소거법을 이용한 하지 혈관 자동 추출 방법을 제안한다. 첫째, 뼈의 부분적인 움직임을 반영하기 위하여 해부학 정보를 바탕으로 하지를 자동 구역화하고, 둘째, CT와 CTA 영상간 움직임을 산정하기 위하여 거리지도 기반의 강체 정합을 수행한다. 셋째, CTA 영상에서 복잡한 구조를 갖는 뼈를 제거하고 뼈에 인접한 혈관이 깎이는 것을 방지하기 위하여 뼈 소거법과 혈관 마스킹 기법을 제안한다. 넷째, 정합오차 및 연골 등의 잡음을 줄이기 위하여 혈관 추적 기반의 후 처리 과정을 통하여 보정한다. 제안 방법의 평가를 위해 육안 평가와 정확성 평가 그리고 수행시간을 측정하였다. 육안 평가를 위해 차감 기법, 정합 후 차감 기법, 제안 방법을 적용한 결과를 볼륨렌더링과 최대 강도 투영영상을 사용하여 비교하였다. 정확성 평가를 위해 CTA 영상과 차감 기반 기법 및 제안 방법을 적용한 결과의 밝기값 분포도를 분석하였다. 실험 결과 뼈는 제거되고 가는 혈관 및 다른 조직의 손실 없이 혈관이 정확하게 추출되었음을 볼 수 있었고, 13명의 환자 데이터 전채에 대한 전체 수행시간은 약 40포 정도로 측정되었다.

Keywords

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