Automated Delineation of Vessel Wall and Thrombus Boundaries of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms Using Multispectral MR Images

Abstract

A correct patient-specific identification of the abdominal aortic aneurysm is useful for both diagnosis and treatment stages, as it locates the disease and represents its geometry. The actual thickness and shape of the arterial wall and the intraluminal thrombus are of great importance when predicting the rupture of the abdominal aortic aneurysms. The authors describe a novel method for delineating both the internal and external contours of the aortic wall, which allows distinguishing between vessel wall and intraluminal thrombus. The method is based on active shape model and texture statistical information. The method was validated with eight MR patient studies. There was high correspondence between automatic and manual measurements for the vessel wall area. Resulting segmented images presented a mean Dice coefficient with respect to manual segmentations of 0.88 and a mean modified Hausdorff distance of 1.14 mm for the internal face and 0.86 and 1.33 mm for the external face of the arterial wall. Preliminary results of the segmentation show high correspondence between automatic and manual measurements for the vessel wall and thrombus areas. However, since the dataset is small the conclusions cannot be generalized.