DYNAMICS OF CORONARY-ARTERY CURVATURE OBTAINED FROM BIPLANE CINEANGIOGRAMS

A system was developed to track the centerlines (axes) of human corona ry arteries during the cardiac cycle from biplane cineangiograms. The system employs a time interpolation technique on one image plane and a smoothing technique on the other to create simultaneous image pairs. The image pairs are then used to reconstruct the three dimensional axe s of the vessels during the cardiac cycle. Once the vessel axes are re constructed, acceleration, velocity and geometric parameters such as c urvature can be obtained. In the present work, a sequence of human ang iograms is used to obtain the axial and temporal variation of the curv ature of a portion of the left anterior descending coronary artery dis tal to the third diagonal branch during two cardiac cycles. For the ca se studied, the change in curvature during the cycle ranged from 0.25 to 1.8 cm(-1), depending upon the position of the site. (C) 1998 Elsev ier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.