COMPUTER VISION APPROACHES FOR THE 3-DIMENSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION OF CORONARY-ARTERIES - REVIEW AND PROSPECTS

The objective of this article is to define the different stages involv ed in the 3D reconstruction of arteries and to review, from our experi ence and from the literature, the solutions already proposed. A full r econstruction framework includes the characterization of the imaging d evice (in terms of distortion and calibration), the specificity of the image acquisition process, the preprocessing that can be applied, the detection of the vascular structures, the 2D feature formation, the r econstruction itself, and the visualization aspects. They are examined according to a computer vision approach where two or three views are assumed to be available. Their generalization to temporal image sequen ces are also considered. Some of the material reported here is unpubli shed. The article allows the reader to identify the true critical issu es that are not often clearly mentioned in the literature and the chal lenges that they convey. A final discussion presents a few perspective s in this area of research.