A numerical 3D coronary tree model

We present a method that defines a numerical 3D model of the main coronary arteries of the human heart at end-diastole. The data used in this article are a subset of the data used in two articles by Dodge et al. [1, 2]. 26 subjects with normal hearts, having measures for the 3 main arteries (right coronary artery, left anterior descending artery and left circumflex artery), were chosen. The method used to obtain the heart model can be summarized as follows: A well-formed subject is chosen as the reference. Subsequently, each of the other subjects is fitted to the reference with affine transformations (translation, rotation and scaling). The model is obtained by applying the mean of the inverse affine transformations back on the reference coronary tree. This model is the first step for the 3D construction of an atlas of the structure and motion of coronary arteries for cardiac contraction analysis. Keyword: 3D, coronary, model