Visualization of coronary arteries with virtual contrast injection

The aim of the project is to develop techniques that present the coronary arteries in CTA and MRA images in a format familiar for clinicians used to catheter angiography.

• Staff:

Örjan Smedby , Prof		Project manager, supervisor		IMH Radiology
Anders Persson , Med dr				IMH Radiology
Anders Jönsson				IMH Cardiology
Chunliang Wang		doctoral student		IMH Radiology
Hans Frimmel		co-supervisor		IT-inst, Uppsala Univ.

• Former Staff:

• Project Description:

A technique called virtual contrast injection, based on the concept of fuzzy connectedness (greyscale connectedness), has been developed to separate arteries and veins in Magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). In this project we apply the same technique to the problem of visualizing coronary arteries in Computed tomography angiography (CTA) and MRA images of the heart where all blood-filled cavities are bright. After separation of the relevant vessels, these can be presented with simple renderings techniques such as Maximum intensity projection (MIP), resulting in images similar to those obtained after invasive catheterization of the coronaries. Contrary to the invasive technique, new projections may be generated after the examination has been finished. The algorithm has been implemented in a plug-in module to the open-source software Osirix, and is freely distributed to users for academic use.