Blood flow assessment from optical flow in cineangiography

We present an optical flow method to infer the blood flow in arteries by tracking the contrast medium in angiography. In our approach, the velocity field is constrained to be parabolic to take into account this particular property of laminar blood flows. With this method, we get several parameters, both hemodynamic and geometric: the artery radius, the maximum velocity, the blood flow, the centerline position of the artery and other related ones. Tests of the algorithm were conducted on simulated cineangiographic images of straight and stenotic vessels and show errors in the order of 1% for straight vessels up to 10% in short stenosis. Preliminary results with femoral arteries are also very encouraging.