A method of automated coronary artery tracking in unsubtracted angiograms

Automated vessel tracking techniques are used to give objective values for artery parameters. Look ahead methods of vessel tracking are subject to false tracking because they ignore information between sampling profiles. The method presented here incorporates information within subsections of the image to provide stable artery tracking even with relatively complex vessel structure. It is slower than other vessel tracking techniques due to calculations being done on complete image blocks but faster than recognition algorithms using global image structures since only local information is processed