Optimal stent implantation: three-dimensional evaluation of the mutual position of stent and vessel via intracoronary echocardiography

Presents a new automatic technique to visualize and quantify the mutual position between the stent and the vessel wall by considering their three-dimensional reconstruction. Two deformable generalized cylinders adapt to the image features in all IVUS planes corresponding to the vessel wall and the stent in order to reconstruct the boundaries of the stent and the vessel in space. The authors image features that characterize the stent and the vessel wall are determined in terms of edge and ridge image detectors taking into account the gray level of the image pixels. The authors show that the 3D reconstruction by deformable cylinders is accurate and robust clue to the spatial data coherence in the considered volumetric IVUS image. The main clinic utility of the stent and vessel reconstruction by deformable cylinders consists of its possibility to visualize and to assess the optimal stent introduction