New analysis tools for the comprehensive assessment of the coronary arteries and myocardial viability in CT data sets

In recent years the diagnosis of the coronary artery disease is supported by non-invasive imaging methods such as CT, MRI, PET or SPECT. Today, CT is the leading modality for morphology imaging of the heart. Moreover, iodine-based contrast agents enable a visualization of myocardial viability with CT. In this work, we present new software assistants, that enable a comprehensive result exploration of cause and effect of an ischemia from one imaging modality. Therefore, we adapted our current methods for the detection and segmentation of myocardial scars to CT data and compare the results with measurements from advanced coronary artery analysis. Results on several pig data demonstrate the ability to automatically detect infarctions and to relate them to the causative coronary arteries. Furthermore, preliminary results with two patient data sets illustrate that accurate patient-specific information can be achieved in addition to the standardized AHA 17-segment model.