Construction of a coronary artery atlas from CT angiography

• Describing the detailed statistical anatomy of the coronary artery tree is important for determining the ætiology of heart disease. A number of studies have investigated geometrical features and have found that these correlate with clinical outcomes, e.g. bifurcation angle with major adverse cardiac events. These methodologies were mainly two-dimensional, manual and prone to inter-observer variability, and the data commonly relates to cases already with pathology. We propose a hybrid atlasing methodology to build a population of computational models of the coronary arteries to comprehensively and accurately assess anatomy including 3D size, geometry and shape descriptors. A random sample of 122 cardiac CT scans with a calcium score of zero was segmented and analysed using a standardised protocol. The resulting atlas includes, but is not limited to, the distributions of the coronary tree in terms of angles, diameters, centrelines, principal component shape analysis and cross-sectional contours. This novel resource will facilitate the improvement of stent design and provide a reference for hemodynamic simulations, and provides a basis for large normal and pathological databases.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Medicinteknik -- Medicinsk bildbehandling (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Medical Engineering -- Medical Image Processing (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Matematik -- Sannolikhetsteori och statistik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Mathematics -- Probability Theory and Statistics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Coronary compute tomographic angiography

major adverse cardiac event

stent design

bifurcation angle

coronary artery tree

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)