Centerlines of blood vessels are useful tools to make important anatomical measurements (length, diameter, area), which cannot be accurately obtained using 2D images. In this paper a brand new method for centerline extraction of vascular trees is presented.

By using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) we are able to obtain a robust and purely functional centerline allowing us to support better measurements than classic purely geometrical-based centerlines.

We show that the CFD-based centerline is within a few pixels from the geometrical centerline where the latter is defined (far away from inlet/outlets and from the branches).

We show that the centerline computed with our method is not affected by traditional errors of other classical volume-based algorithms such as topological thinning, and could be a potential alternative to be considered for future studies.

This is one of the scientific articles published by one or more synbrAIn collaborators and data scientists.

If you are interested in learning more, read the entire article here.