An improved graph matching algorithm for the spatio-temporal matching of a coronary artery 3D tree sequence

3D/2D Vessel Registration Based on Monte Carlo Tree Search and Manifold Regularization

The augmented intra-operative real-time imaging in vascular interventional surgery, which is generally performed by projecting preoperative computed tomography angiography images onto intraoperative digital subtraction angiography (DSA) images, can compensate for the deficiencies of DSA-based navigation, such as lack of depth information and excessive use of toxic contrast agents. 3D/2D vessel registration is the critical step in image augmentation. A 3D/2D registration method based on vessel graph matching is proposed in this study. For rigid registration, the matching of vessel graphs can be decomposed into continuous states, thus 3D/2D vascular registration is formulated as a search tree problem. The Monte Carlo tree search method is applied to find the optimal vessel matching associated with the highest rigid registration score. For nonrigid registration, we propose a novel vessel deformation model based on manifold regularization. This model incorporates the smoothness constraint of vessel topology into the objective function. Furthermore, we derive simplified gradient formulas that enable fast registration. The proposed technique undergoes evaluation against seven rigid and three nonrigid methods using a variety of data - simulated, algorithmically generated, and manually annotated - across three vascular anatomies: the hepatic artery, coronary artery, and aorta. Our findings show the proposed method's resistance to pose variations, noise, and deformations, outperforming existing methods in terms of registration accuracy and computational efficiency. The proposed method demonstrates average registration errors of 2.14 mm and 0.34 mm for rigid and nonrigid registration, and an average computation time of 0.51 s.

Inexact coronary tree matching algorithm with artificial nodes

Coronary tree matching is applied to plan percutaneous vascular procedures. This work, which allows following each segment of non-isomorphic coronary trees over time, precedes the determination of the best 2D angiography view from C-arm acquisition system for angioplasty procedure. To match two 3D coronary trees which represent two successive cardiac phases, we adapted a reference inexact tree matching algorithm based on association graph and maximum clique. To improve the pair-wise matching performance of our approach, artificial nodes are introduced to take into account the topology variation between 3D vascular trees. Different similarity measures using tree characteristics and geometric features of coronary branches are evaluated and compared to our previous work.