Robust Vessel Tree Modeling

A method for extracting a local center-axis representation of a vessel, comprising:

• placing first and second seed points in an image that includes a vessel, wherein the first and second seed points are placed near a beginning and an end of a centerline of the vessel;
• representing the image as a discrete graph having nodes and edges, wherein the first seed point is a source node and the second seed point is a goal node;
• and
• finding a minimum-cost path between the first and second seed points by computing a cost of edges between the first and second seed points, wherein the cost of each edge is reciprocal to a vesselness measure of the edge.

A system for computing a vesselness measure, comprising:

• a memory device for storing a program;
• a processor in communication with the memory device, the processor operative with the program to:
• initialize a plurality of rays from a center point of a vessel and collect an intensity profile of the vessel and a background of the vessel along each ray;
• model each intensity profile by dividing the intensity profile into first, second and third intervals, wherein the first interval represents an intensity value inside the vessel, the second interval represents an intensity value outside the vessel and the third interval represents an intensity value between a boundary of the vessel and the background;
• for each ray, obtain a difference between an originally measured intensity profile of the vessel and the background and the originally measured intensity profile's corresponding modeled intensity profile, wherein the difference is a fit measure of the ray;
• and
• sum the fit measures for each ray, wherein the total sum is the vesselness measure.

A system for extracting a local center-axis representation of a vessel, comprising:

• a memory device for storing a program;
• a processor in communication with the memory device, the processor operative with the program to:
• place first and second seed points in an image that includes a vessel, wherein the first and second seed points are placed near a beginning and an end of a centerline of the vessel;
• represent the image as a discrete graph having nodes and edges, wherein the first seed point is a source node and the second seed point is a goal node;
• and
• find a minimum-cost path between the first and second seed points by computing a cost of edges between the first and second seed points, wherein the cost of each edge is reciprocal to a vesselness measure of the edge.

A system for vessel tree modeling, comprising:

• a memory device for storing a program;
• a processor in communication with the memory device, the processor operative with the program to:
• compute minimum cost paths from a single source located in a vessel of a vessel tree;
• and
• compute centerlines of the vessel tree by using an accumulative cost map of the minimum cost paths, wherein the centerlines correspond to respective vessels in the vessel tree.