PROBLEMS IN ACQUISITION AND REPRESENTATION OF CORONARY ARTERIAL TRESS.
The nature of the contractions of the heart wall has long been recognized as indicative of the presence and degree of atherosclerotic lesions in the coronary arteries. More recently, the coronary arterial tree itself has been studied and the changes in length of the arterial segments during a heart cycle have been shown to have diagnostic value for coronary artery disease. Further, it has been proposed that the geometry of the tree influences the nature and location of lesions in the walls of the coronary vessels. To further study the relation between the physical configuration of the coronary tree and the development or presence of coronary artery disease it will be necessary to develop algorithms for the efficient measurement, representation, and storage of coronary trees by computer. This paper is a report of preliminary efforts to process trees by computer and a discussion of some of the problems involved in this effort.
