Abstract #1278

Hamilton C, Hundley W, Bayram E

Vessel segmentation is important for many diagnostic tasks such as blood flow quantification and shear stress calculations; yet it is challenging as vessels shape and position vary throughout the cardiac cycle. Manual delineation is considered the gold standard; however it is time consuming and observer-dependent. The proposed deformable template assumes an elliptical equilibrium shape, but deforms to the underlying vessel thru simulated annealing, which is governed by the shape constraints and local image features. The method is applied to the quantification of flow in ascending aorta phase contrast images. Comparison with manual analysis reveals that the proposed technique is fast and reliable.