3D coronary structure tracking algorithm with regularization and multiple hypotheses in MRI

This paper presents an improved version of a tracking algorithm for the extraction of the 3D central axis of tubular-like object in a low-contrast and multi-object environment. This improvement concerns two aspects: (1) an efficient Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filtering of the successive tracking directions is used to introduce regularization and (2) a multiple hypotheses testing procedure allows an almost exhaustive selection of the best centreline location by building different paths according to the applied parameters. A score is then computed for each hypothesis that helps in the selection of the best path along the tree. The improved tracking algorithm is tested on Magnetic Resonance Angiography (MRA) datasets to extract the coronary artery centrelines.