Parametric LV Model Fitting to Coronary Arteries

X-ray angiography is the gold standard in assessing coronary artery diseases. With research focus shifting towards 3D+t applications, heart models that allow for the extraction of functional parameters from the heart motion receive increasing attention. We present an approach to fit a parametric left ventricular heart model originally developed for tagged MRI to the centerlines of coronary arteries reconstructed from rotational coronary angiography. This 3D model fitting process must accommodate the sparse point set conditional to the underlying angiography data. Using a coarse-to-fine optimization based on simulated annealing and ellipsoid pseudo-distances, we achieve a reprojection error of 0.794mm for the surface points compared to 0.422mm of the 3D centerline ground truth. Results are promising and form the basis to extend the model to 3D+t in order to monitor radial and longitudinal contraction as well as left ventricular twist over the cardiac cycle.