Automatic gating window selection for gated three-dimensional coronary X-ray angiography

For the reconstruction of the coronary arteries from rotational angiography data (3D-RCA), a crucial point is the selection of the optimal cardiac phase for data reconstruction. To avoid time-consuming interactive selection of the optimal cardiac phase by visual inspection of multiple high-resolution data sets reconstructed at different cardiac phases, an automatic approach for deriving optimal reconstruction windows is attractive. This paper presents a new approach to fully automatic selection of the optimal cardiac phase for image reconstruction. It is based on the analysis of a four-dimensional data set of the region of interest reconstructed at low-spatial resolution utilizing the unique property of 3D-RCA of almost binary (vessel vs. no vessel) image information. The proposed technique was applied to 14 projection data sets obtained in several pigs. In all cases, images reconstructed at the automatically derived cardiac phases result in a similar image quality as the reconstructions obtained from the interactively derived phases. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.