Evaluation of the reliability of calculated 3D vascular trees and their alignment with other views

Accurate intra- and inter-patient quantitative analyses of the coronary vasculature will require accurate methods for determination of the 3D coronary tree as well as methods to relate these data to previously acquired vascular trees. We have developed methods for determination of the 3D coronary trees from biplane angiograms and for alignment of calculated 3D trees with previously acquired 2D projections. After alignment, the projected centerlines of the aligned 3D vasculature and those in the reference image were visually similar in shape and position. The variation in the average RMS difference between calculated and reference centerlines was 1.3 mm, indicating a high similarity between the shapes of the calculated and actual vessels. These results indicate that the 3D vascular structure reconstructed from two views is accurate and that previously calculated 3D trees can be aligned with previously acquired images.