An Algorithm for Extracting Centerline of the Aorta from CT/MR 3D Images

Aorta is the main artery in the human body, originating from the left ventricle of the heart and extending down to the abdomen. The aorta distributes oxygenated blood to all parts of the body. The aorta branches off into two main arteries called coronary arteries. For investigating the heart related diseases, it is very important to know the exact geometry of the aorta and coronary arteries. One of the important parameters is to compute the centerline or skeleton of the aorta. Skeletonization is a process in which foreground image data is reduced to a single line that preserves the extent and connectivity of the original object region. From the skeleton, then different geometric parameters like the diameter of the aorta, branching angles and branching locations of the coronary arteries can be computed. The challenge in geometry computation is faced when the input image data is noisy. In this paper, we propose a new method for computing the centerline of the aorta using 3D Computed Tomography or Magnetic Resonance images. The experimental results show that the suggested algorithm performs well on image data even if the data is noisy.