Reconstruction of 3D geometry of coronary arteries

We consider the problem of 3D reconstruction for the internal surface of aorta and coronary arteries. This is needed for the creation of a hydrodynamic model of blood supply to the heart. The initial data are transverse tomographic sections of the heart of a particular patient with a thickness of 0.5 mm. Triangulation of the aorta and coronary arteries is to be used to calculate a blood flow in the software package FlowVision, designed for modeling three-dimensional flows of liquid and gas. The simulation results are planned to be applied in practical medicine for the diagnosis of myocardial ischemia.
Triangulation is calculated using a three-dimensional Seeded Region Growing algorithm that creates a set of voxels. Then the triangulation of the surface of this set is constructed and smoothed by the Subdivision Surface method. We also describe a semi-automatic procedure to define a Region of Interest used to separate the aorta and coronary arteries from the inner volume of heart, veins and other structures that should not be included in the constructed triangulation.