Three-dimensional reconstruction of coronary arterial tree from several sets of biplane angiograms with simultaneous estimation of imaging geometry

A new method is proposed for reconstructing the three-dimensional (3D) structure of the coronary arterial tree from angiograms. Instead of identification of corresponding points on the images, several sets of biplane angiograms are used, and the parameters of the imaging geometries are simultaneously estimated. Several sets of biplane angiograms are usually obtained during one angiographic test. However, only one set of biplane angiogram is usually used for 3D reconstruction of the coronary arterial tree. If only one set of biplane angiogram is used for 3D reconstruction, it is necessary to identify corresponding points on both images. Identification of correspondent points on both images is, however, very difficult and often impossible. To overcome this difficulty, we use several sets of biplane angiograms for 3D reconstruction. If the precise parameters of the imaging geometries are known, the 3D structure of the coronary arterial tree can be obtained by back projecting each angiogram. However, only the approximate parameters of the imaging geometries are usually known. Therefore, we developed a method for 3D reconstruction of a coronary arterial tree with simultaneous estimation of the imaging geometry. In this paper, we present the algorithm for our method and demonstrate the application to clinical data.