Determination of Aortic Elasticity from MR- and CT- Images Using an Automatic Active Contour Model
The possibility to monitor changes in aortic elasticity in humans has important applications for clinical trials predicting arterial diseases before they become morphologically apparent. The elasticity is usually quantified by compliance measurements. Therefore, the relative temporal change in vessel cross-sectional area through the cardiac cycle or alternatively, the pulse-wave velocity has to be determined. In this work we determined the compliance via 3 MR methods (FLASH, TrueFISP and pulse-wave) and additionally CT. We developed an algorithm for the automatic segmentation of the artery wall from MR and CT images. Thus, the reliable detection of the aortic cross sectional area over the entire heart cycle was possible for both MR and CT with a relative error of about 1% depending on image quality. The reliability of the method was evaluated by means of a CT phantom setup.
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