Laura Ellwein
Patient-specific 3D Reconstruction of a Stented Coronary Artery for Analysis of Cardiovascular Disease

Abstract
We developed a patient-specific coronary artery reconstruction method that combines optical coherence tomography (OCT), an intravascular imaging modality, with techniques for imaging wire pathway reconstruction adopted from graph theory. First the wire pathway with minimum bending energy was determined by applying a shortest path algorithm to a graph representation of the artery, based on prior studies indicating that a wire adopts its straightest configuration within a tortuous vessel. Segments from OCT images were then registered orthogonal to the wire pathway using rotational orientation consistent with geometry determined by computed tomography (CT). To demonstrate applicability, OCT segments within the stented region were combined with upstream and downstream CT segments and imported into computational fluid dynamics software to quantify indices of wall shear stress (WSS). We present WSS results from the method applied to imaging data of a left circumflex coronary artery acquired immediately post-stenting and after a 6-month follow-up period. This novel methodology capable of reconstructing a stented coronary artery may ultimately enhance our knowledge of harmful hemodynamic indices induced by stenting after further investigation in a larger patient population.


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