SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DETECTING THE AORTIC VALVE USING A MODEL-BASED SEGMENTATION TECHNIQUE

摘要

A system and method for detecting the aortic valve is provided. The method comprises: (a) casting rays on a slice of a computed tomography (CT) dataset of an aorta (215); (b) computing a Gaussian model for voxels on the slice, wherein the Gaussian model produces a threshold (220); (c) growing a circle from a point within the aorta until control points of the circle reach the threshold (225); (d) computing a repulsion vector for each control point reaching the threshold (230); (e) repositioning the circle according to an average of the repulsion vectors (235), wherein if the circle is within the aorta, repeating steps (c-e) until the circle is not within the aorta (240); (f) calculating a statistical value for the circle; (g) projecting a copy of the circle onto an adjacent slice (245); (h) reducing the radius of the copy of the circle (245); and (i) repeating steps (c-h) on remaining CT slices until the aortic valve is detected (250).