A knowledge-based system for the automatic quantification of stenotic lesions on angiograms

Work-in-progress is described regarding a fully automatic reporting system for coronary artery stenotic lesions. A knowledge-based system is developed for the automatic labeling of the left coronary artery (LCA) on standard RAO and LAO projections. By means of a hierarchical search strategy, using several heuristic blood vessel models, the most important coronary arteries are given a correct anatomical label. After this labeling phase, an automatic quantification of all artery trajectories is performed. A stenosis severity score is calculated for each segment, which is not only based on local properties, like percent diameter or percent area stenosis, but also takes into account the anatomical significance of the vessel. Results are presented on clinical coronary angiograms