Robust CTA lumen segmentation of the atherosclerotic carotid artery bifurcation in a large patient population

Manniesing, Rashindra; Schaap, Michiel; Rozie, Sietske; Hameeteman, Reinhard; Vukadinovic, Danijela; van der Lugt, Aad; Niessen, Wiro

doi:10.1016/j.media.2010.05.001

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Volume 14, Issue 6 , Pages 759-769, December 2010

Robust CTA lumen segmentation of the atherosclerotic carotid artery bifurcation in a large patient population

Rashindra Manniesing
- Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam, Departments of Medical Informatics and Radiology, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, P.O. Box 2040, 3000 CA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
- Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 10 7043050; fax: +31 10 7044722.
Michiel Schaap
- Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam, Departments of Medical Informatics and Radiology, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, P.O. Box 2040, 3000 CA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Sietske Rozie
- Department of Radiology, Erasmus MC – University Medical Center Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Reinhard Hameeteman
- Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam, Departments of Medical Informatics and Radiology, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, P.O. Box 2040, 3000 CA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Danijela Vukadinovic
- Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam, Departments of Medical Informatics and Radiology, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, P.O. Box 2040, 3000 CA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Aad van der Lugt
- Department of Radiology, Erasmus MC – University Medical Center Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Wiro Niessen
- Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam, Departments of Medical Informatics and Radiology, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, P.O. Box 2040, 3000 CA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
- Imaging Science and Technology, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Received 18 March 2009; received in revised form 4 May 2010; accepted 4 May 2010. published online 17 May 2010.

Abstract

We propose and validate a semi-automatic method for lumen segmentation of the carotid bifurcation in computed tomography angiography (CTA). First, the central vessel axis is obtained using path tracking between three user-defined points. Second, starting from this path, the segmentation is automatically obtained using a level set. The cost and speed functions for path tracking and segmentation make use of intensity and homogeneity slice-based image features. The method is validated on a large data set of 234 carotid bifurcations of 129 ischemic stroke patients with atherosclerotic disease. The results are compared to manually obtained lumen segmentations. Parameter optimization is carried out on a subset of 30 representative carotid bifurcations. With the optimized parameter settings the method successfully tracked the central vessel paths in 201 of the remaining 204 bifurcations (99%) which were not part of the training set. Comparison with manually drawn segmentations shows that the average overlap between the method and observers is similar (for the inter-observer set the results were 92% vs. 87% and for the intra-observer set 94% vs. 94%). Therefore the method has potential to replace the manual procedure of lumen segmentation of the atherosclerotic bifurcation in CTA.

Keywords: Lumen segmentation, Level set, CT angiography (CTA), Atherosclerotic carotid bifurcation, Evaluation