Curvilinear structure enhancement with the polygonal path image--application to guide-wire segmentation in X-ray fluoroscopy.

Curvilinear structures are common in medical imaging, which typically require dedicated processing techniques. We present a new structure to process these, that we call the polygonal path image, denoted (see text for symbol). We derive from (see text for symbol) some curvilinear structure enhancement and analysis algorithms. We show that (see text for symbol) has some interesting properties: it generalizes several concepts found in other methods; it makes it possible to control the smoothness and length of the structures under study; and it can be computed efficiently. We estimate quantitatively its performance in the context of interventional cardiology for the detection of guide-wires in Xray images. We show that (see text for symbol) is particularly well suited for this task where it appears to outperform previous state of the art techniques.

A comprehensive study of stent visualization enhancement in X-ray images by image processing means.

In this work we propose a comprehensive study of Digital Stent Enhancement (DSE), from the analysis of the requirements to the validation of the proposed solution. First, we derive the stent visualization requirements in the context of the clinical application and workflow. Then, we propose a DSE algorithm combining automatic detection, tracking, registration and contrast enhancement. The most original parts of our solution: landmark segmentation and non-linear image registration are detailed. Finally, we validate the algorithm on a large number of synthetic and clinical cases. Performance is characterized in terms of automation, image quality and execution time. This work is, to the best of our knowledge, the first comprehensive article on DSE, covering problem statement, proposed solution, and validation strategies.