Title: Segmentation of coronary artery tree from computed tomography angiography using region growing method

Authors: Marwa Shams; Mohammed A-M. Salem; Safwat Hamad; Howida A. Shedeed

Addresses: Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt ' Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt ' Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt ' Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt

Abstract: Recently, automated analysis of medical images becomes important for easier and faster clinical diagnosis. Identifying human organs is the key component for such analysis, i.e., segmentation of the anatomical structures from medical images. Coronary arteries segmentation gained wide interest in old and recent scientific research, thus various methods have been developed for segmenting coronaries from different cardiac imaging modalities. This paper provides a review of studies based on region growing (RG) method in segmentation of coronary arteries from computed tomography angiography (CTA). The main objective of this paper is to highlight the different perspectives of applying RG in the segmentation process. Firstly, medical background is provided to coronary disease, CTA and RG algorithm explanation. Finally, the studies are compared to each other according to the selection of seed points, detection of seed points, preprocessing and enhancements, RG segmentation process and finally the post-processing.

Keywords: region growing; RG; coronary arteries; vessel segmentation; computed tomography angiography; CTA; medical imaging; cardiology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMEI.2018.090083

International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics, 2018 Vol.10 No.1, pp.65 - 85

Received: 23 Nov 2016
Accepted: 13 Jan 2017
Published online: 28 Feb 2018 *

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