Esophagus silhouette extraction and reconstruction from fluoroscopic views for cardiac ablation procedure guidance.

Journal Article (Journal Article)

Cardiac ablation involves the risk of serious complications when thermal injury to the esophagus occurs. This paper proposes to reduce the risk of such injuries by a proactive visualization technique, improving physician awareness of the esophagus location in the absence of or in addition to a reactive monitoring device such as a thermal probe. This is achieved by combining a graphical representation of the esophagus with live fluoroscopy. Toward this goal, we present an automated method to reconstruct and visualize a 3-D esophagus model from fluoroscopy image sequences acquired using different C-arm viewing directions. In order to visualize the esophagus under fluoroscopy, it is first biomarked by swallowing a contrast agent such as barium. Images obtained in this procedure are then used to automatically extract the 2-D esophagus silhouette and reconstruct a 3-D surface of the esophagus internal wall. Once the 3-D representation has been computed, it can be visualized using fluoroscopy overlay techniques. Compared to 3-D esophagus imaging using CT or C-arm CT, our proposed fluoroscopy method requires low radiation dose and enables a simpler workflow on geometry-calibrated standard C-arm systems.

Full Text

Duke Authors

Cited Authors

  • Yatziv, L; Ibarz, J; Strobel, N; Datta, S; Sapiro, G

Published Date

  • September 2011

Published In

Volume / Issue

  • 15 / 5

Start / End Page

  • 703 - 708

PubMed ID

  • 21775266

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1558-0032

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1089-7771

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1109/titb.2011.2162247

Language

  • eng