Functional Morphology Analysis of the Left Anterior Descending Coronary Artery in EBCT Images

In this paper, we present a physics-based deformable model framework for morphological and motion analysis of the left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery. The proposed model is designed to capture the complex motion that the LAD undergoes during the cardiac cycle. The key idea is to define a local coordinate system for the heart and to parameterize both the shape and motion of the LAD in a single framework. The shape of the LAD is modeled as a parametric generalized cylinder, and the motion during the heart cycle is modeled as a composite of three components, which are as follows: 1) longitudinal deformation, 2) radial displacement, and 3) angular displacement over the cardiac cycle. The proposed framework for the LAD shape-motion estimation is generic, since it does not assume any particular tubular shape. Results obtained for four human subjects using electron beam computed tomography data are in agreement with LAD shape-motion deformations reported in the literature.