Three-dimensional shape reconstruction of abdominal aortic aneurysm

This paper presents an effective computational technique for reconstructing a three-dimensional shape of an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), from a limited number of computed tomography (CT) images. The three-dimensional template geometry of a healthy abdominal aorta is used as a priori knowledge, and the template geometry is deformed by extended free-form deformation (EFFD), to generate a patient-specific AAA geometry. A two-step optimization scheme is devised to find an optimal set of EFFD parameters that match the cross-section of a deformed template with an AAA contour shown in a CT image. The geometric continuity of a deformed model is maintained by raising the order of the polynomial function used in EFFD. Experimental results show that the proposed method creates the three-dimensional shape of AAA suitable for structural finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics for medical diagnosis. c © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.