Extraction and quantitative analysis of aneurysmal aorta for aiding endovascular stent grafting.

In performing interventions including stent grafting, the suitability for stent grafting must be checked and the devices to be used must be designed preoperatively. For these purposes, the three-dimensional shapes of the blood vessels in lesions or the paths of device placement must be measured accurately and quickly. In this paper, a method for measuring the aortal shape from CT angiogram (CTA) and for detecting lesions from the shape characteristics of these is presented. Specifically, this method extracts the blood flow area of the aorta by using a three-dimensional edge-preserving smoothing filter and a region growing method. Extracted blood vessels are classified by using their anatomical characteristics. After initial setting of the medial axis in a blood vessel, it determines the aneurysmal area based on the diameter of the blood vessel and modifies the medial axis. In addition, it detects lesions such as thrombi and calcifications near the blood flow borderline. Application of the method to 30 clinical cases has confirmed that the proposed method is effective in obtaining the shape of blood vessels. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 35(3): 58–67, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (). DOI 10.1002/scj.10223