Abstract

ZULUAGA, MARIA A et al. Adaptation of the MARACAS Algorithm for Carotid Artery Segmentation and Stenosis Quantification on CT Images. Acta biol.Colomb. [online]. 2010, vol.15, n.3, pp.197-212. ISSN 0120-548X.

This paper describes the adaptations of MARACAS algorithm to the segmentation and quantification of vascular structures in CTA images of the carotid artery. The MARACAS algorithm, which is based on an elastic model and on a multi-scale eigen-analysis of the inertia matrix, was originally designed to segment a single artery in MRA images. The modifications are primarily aimed at addressing the specificities of CT images and the bifurcations. The algorithms implemented in this new version are classified into two levels. 1. The low-level processing (filtering of noise and directional artifacts, enhancement and pre-segmentation) to improve the quality of the image and to pre-segment it. These techniques are based on a priori information about noise, artifacts and typical gray levels ranges of lumen, background and calcifications. 2. The high-level processing to extract the centerline of the artery, to segment the lumen and to quantify the stenosis. At this level, we apply a priori knowledge of shape and anatomy of vascular structures. The method was evaluated on 31 datasets from the Carotid Lumen Segmentation and Stenosis Grading Grand Challenge 2009. The segmentation results obtained an average of 80:4% Dice similarity score, compared to reference segmentations, and the mean stenosis quantification error was 14.4%.

Keywords : vascular segmentation; stenosis; Computed Tomography; carotid artery.

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