Method and Apparatus for Inner Wall Extraction and Stent Strut Detection Using Intravascular Optical Coherence Tomography Imaging

Abstract

A method and apparatus for automatically detecting stent struts in an image is disclosed whereby the inner boundary, or lumen, of an artery wall is first detected automatically and intensity profiles along rays in the image are determined. In one embodiment, detection of the lumen boundary may be accomplished, for example, by evolving a geometric shape, such as an ellipse, using a region-based algorithm technique, a geodesic boundary-based algorithm technique or a combination of the two techniques. Once the lumen boundary has been determined, in another embodiment, the stent struts are detected using a ray shooting algorithm whereby a ray is projected outward in the OCT image starting from the position in the image of the OCT sensor. The intensities of the pixels along the ray are used to detect the presence of a stent strut in the image.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.