A fast vascular centerline extraction method based on Voronoi diagram

Through the technology of vascular segmentation, the vascular structure in the angiograms can be extracted from the complex background, which has important clinical value for the diagnosis and treatment of vascular diseases. For the uneven gray scale distribution of the X-ray accumulation in the angiographic images, most traditional methods present large extraction errors for vessels with multiple intersections or for small segments. In this paper, a novel method is developed for the extraction of the vasculature from coronary angiographic images based on Voronoi diagram. The developed method employs geometric properties to determine the centerline. Hence, it can minimize the effect of uneven gray scale distribution and the bifurcation interferences. Accurate vascular extraction can be guaranteed by optimized sampling method. Experimental results show that the developed method is very effective and robust, which can obtain accurate centerlines from the angiographic images quickly.