Surgery – Diagnostic testing – Detecting nuclear – electromagnetic – or ultrasonic radiation
Utility Patent
1998-12-29
2001-01-02
Kamm, William E. (Department: 3762)
Surgery
Diagnostic testing
Detecting nuclear, electromagnetic, or ultrasonic radiation
Utility Patent
active
06169917
ABSTRACT:
DESCRIPTION
The present invention relates to a method and a device capable of reconstructing the three-dimensional structure of complex blood vessels, particularly the structure of the coronary arteries. The method and the device are also suitable for reconstructing three-dimensional structures other than the structures of blood vessels. In the following text, therefore, unless specified otherwise, the term “vessel” denotes any elongate three-dimensional structure whose three-dimensional image is to be reconstructed from two-dimensional images.
Since 1959, the date of production of the first catheter which made it possible to reach the emergence of the system of coronary arteries, to inject the contrast medium into them and thus to permit the visualization of the epicardial arterial vessels by using X-rays, there has been a constant improvement of the angiographic images. At the present time, examinations carried out with an angiography instrument called a coronary angiograph are widely used.
However, less progress has been made in the identification of an objective and accurate method for analyzing these images. The evaluation of the relevant clinical parameters from angiographic photograms continues to be affected by serious errors of interpretation due to the loss of information associated with the projection of a three-dimensional object on a plane. It is therefore important to integrate the data obtained from a plurality of images and to reconstruct the three-dimensional structure of the coronary arteries.
The object of the present invention is to provide a device and a method capable of reconstructing the three-dimensional structure of the coronary arteries, or of other systems of vessels or even of other three-dimensional structures, by means of the analysis of three or more angiographic images, possibly acquired at different times.
Essentially, the system consists of a coronary angiograph, a reference object integral with the patient, enabling the geometric characterization of the coronary angiograph to be carried out, and an algorithm which can provide the 3D reconstruction of the tree of the coronary vessels on the basis of the analysis of each image and from the geometric characteristics of the coronary angiograph itself. Reference will be made in the following text to the analysis of the coronary arteries, but it should be understood that the same system can also be used for examining other structures of blood vessels, or structures in other parts of the human or animal body, or even structures of other types, such as mechanical structures, objects of art or archeological finds to be restored, or similar.
The proposed instrument carries out the reconstruction in a semi-automatic way, and enables the most appropriate projections for the diagnostic examination to be identified from the reconstructed three-dimensional structure. Another object of the patent, therefore, is the procedure of automatic selection of the exposures which contribute to the acquisition of images with a high information content.
The method according to the invention and the corresponding device are specified in the attached claims.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5699799 (1997-12-01), Xu et al.
patent: 5891030 (1999-08-01), Johnson et al.
Buzzigoli Francesco
Fort Ada
Masotti Leonardo
Pini Riccardo
Kamm William E.
McGlew and Tuttle , P.C.
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