Segmentation of coronary arteries based on transition region extraction

Aiming at the complex background of coronary angiograms, weak contrast between the coronary arteries and the background, a new segmentation method based on transition region extraction is proposed. The paper analyzes the characteristic of coronary angiograms, and then 6 different Gaussian matched templates are used to enhance the coronary angiograms. Finally, the coronary arteries are obtained with local complexity method based on transition region extraction. The experiments indicate that the proposed method outperforms the segmentation method based on top-hat about the small vessels extraction, connectivity and effectiveness. The method is indeed valuable for diagnosis and the quantitative analysis of coronary arteries.