Automatic Centerline Extraction of Coronary Arteries in Computed Tomography Angiography Images

In this paper, we present an automatic method for extracting centerlines of coronary arteries in contrast enhanced (CE)-CT angiography scans. The proposedalgorithm first detects the aorta which is used as an initial mask for ostia detection. Second, the ostia locations are detected via a vessel centerline extraction method which tracksthe center axis of the coronaries starting from the aorta surface. The full centerline tree of the coronary arteries is computedvia the Region Growing algorithm which is based on geometrical features of vessels and starts a tracking processfrom the ostia locations until all the branches are detected