3D reconstruction of vessel lumen from very few angiograms by dynamic contours using a stochastic approach

3D luminal vessel geometry description and visualization are important for the diagnosis and the prognosis of heart attack and stroke. A general mathe matical framework is proposed for 3D reconstruction of vessel sections from a few angiograms, Regularization is introduced by modeling the vessel boun dary slices by smooth contours to get the reconstruction problem well posed . A dynamic contour approach is applied to optimize the shape of the contou r according to the recorded angiograms and the internal smoothness constrai nts. The solution is achieved following the minimization of a nonconvex ene rgy function assigned to the contour with a simulated annealing algorithm. Preliminary testing on noisy and truncated synthetic images produces promis ing results, Evaluation and validation of the method on hardware phantoms a re also presented. (C) 2000 Academic Press.