Adaptive tracking extraction of vessel centerlines in coronary arteriograms using Hessian matrix

A method for accurate extraction of the coronary arterial centerline was presented for automated positioning of the coronary vessel borders and 3-D reconstruction to aid clinical diagnoses of cardiovascular diseases. The method is an improvement of the Sun arithmetic. The method implements an accurate extraction using Hessian matrix eigenvectors and the Canny operator. The test results show that the determination of the centerline point directions by the Hessian matrix eigenvector resolves tracking inaccuracies resulting from abrupt changes of the arterial curvature. The calculation of the artery radius by the Canny operator resolves interruptions of the tracking resulting from the superposition and overlapping of the coronary artery. The method has better robustness and accuracy than the Sun algorithm.