3-DIMENSIONAL BLOOD-VESSEL RECONSTRUCTION USING A HIGH-SPEED X-RAY ROTATIONAL PROJECTION SYSTEM

The feature X-ray angiography is that a blood vessel image with a high spatial resolution is obtained. Consequently, it is a decisive diagnostic tool for the pathology of the blood vessel. However, its precision is still sufficient for the diagnosis of blood vessels with delicate aneurysm or stenosis, as well as for planning surgery. Thus, it is desired to develop further an imaging method for the blood vessel configuration with a higher precision. This paper describes a precise observation method for the blood vessel configuration, where a pair of X-ray source and the image intensifier (II) with a high-speed rotation is used to scan and derive multidirectional projection images, and the blood vessel configuration is reconstructed in three-dimensions for high-precision 3D observation. As a pre-processing to the reconstruction, the image distortion correction for II as well as the estimation of the camera coordinate are executed. In the 3D reconstruction of the blood vessel, the filtered backprojection method is used with the short-scan (details are discussed later) cone-beam projection. The result of 3D reconstruction of the blood vessel can be observed by the 3D display and the 3D model for the blood vessel configuration. The method is applied to the actual projection image of the cerebral blood vessels, and the effectiveness is demonstrated. By this method, a highly precise measurement of the blood vessel shape is realized, which has not been observed by the past technique, and the configuration of the blood vessel can be analyzed in the 3D space. It is expected that the proposed method with those features will be utilized in the quantitative diagnosis of the cerebral blood vessel diseases and treatment planning.