Structural method for tracking coronary arteries in coronary cineangiograms

In this paper, a model-based tracking algorithm is implemented to track the motion of coronary arteries. This idea was first introduced by Kong et al. [10] in 1971 to assess the heart contraction using for this purpose the coronary bifurcations as natural landmarks on the epicardial surface. The method implemented here assumes that a coronary bifurcation can be represented by a simple Y geometric structure. A Fuzzy C-Means algorithm is first used to segment the coronary bifurcations. Then the segmented bifurcation is skeletonized to produce the expected Y shape. To define the Y shape geometrically, its center and the branch angles are computed. The tracking process can now take place by simply looking for a similar Y shape in the next frame and so on. Using actual cineangiograms, it is demonstrated that tracking the movement of coronaries with this geometrical approach is more accurate and robust then using a standard correlation window methodology.