A New Method for Estimation of Coronary Artery Dimensions in Angiograms

A new approach is presented for the measurement of the severity of coronary obstructions from coronary angiograms. Existing techniques are heuristic and their performance is not satisfactory. The proposed approach exploits the characteristics of the signals involved. A model of the film density of the densitometric profiles of lines crossing the vessel is developed and used to estimate the diameter and cross-sectional area at each point along the vessel. The model accounts for the structure of the vessel and background, as well as the distortions introduced by the imaging system. The algorithms are tested on synthetic data, on X-rays of contrast-medium-filled cylindrical phantoms, and on real coronary angiograms. The algorithms are shown to have better performance than current methods.