2D and 3D-superimposition of cardiac SPECT and coronarography data

This contribution deals with the diagnostic aid for cardiovascular diseases using a simultaneous exploitation of Nuclear Medicine Imaging and X-ray Cine Angiography. The aim of this work is to superimpose the myocardial perfusion images on the coronarography ones as well as to reconstruct the coronary tree and set it on the perfusion volume. The final objective is to present in a synthetic way the information provided by both modalities. This data superimposition makes the diagnosis easier since the conjoint analysis of both modalities leads to a better visualization and understanding of the relationship between the stenosis on coronary arteries and their consequences on perfusion. Furthermore, these methods use standard modalities without strong constraints, and do not need any calibration procedure. That makes this solution easy and flexible to distribute. This paper presents a segmentation method of myocardial boundaries with deformable models, a registration of both modalities and a 3D-reconstruction technique of coronary vessels based on homologous points.