SYSTEM FOR ANALYZING HIGH-RESOLUTION 3-DIMENSIONAL CORONARY ANGIOGRAMS

Three-dimensional (3-D) high-resolution coronary angiograms offer a me ans for visualizing the entire coronary arterial tree from any orienta tion and for detecting and quantitating coronary arterial stenoses, Pr eviously, a skilled operator had to perform several hours of tedious m anual analysis using an interactive graphical user-interface (GUI) sys tem (Tree Trace) to analyze a 3-D angiogram, We have devised an improv ed GUI system, consisting of three tools for analyzing 3-D angiograms, The Artery Extractor first performs automatic image-analysis operatio ns to extract the central axes of the arterial tree, Next, using the A rtery Display tool and results from the Artery Extractor, the operator can visualize structures in the angiogram and compute various measure ments, Finally, the aforementioned Tree Trace tool can be used to manu ally correct irregularities in the automatically generated results of the Artery Extractor, The system greatly reduces operator analysis tim e, gives exactly reproducible results, uses true 3-D image-processing operations, and provides a comprehensive interface for visualizing and quantifying features of the 3-D coronary arteries.