Automatic Segmentation of Soft-Plaques in Coronay-CT Angiograms

Master-Thesis

Stenoses of coronary vessels caused by soft-plaques are still a major concern in medical diagnosis and treatment planning. A soft-plaque is mostly fibrous or lipid-rich tissue deposited at the vascular wall. Since coronary CT angiograms do have very low soft-tissue contrast, those narrowings are very hard to detect. Moreover, although the effect of so called hard-plaques (or calcifications) is clinically well understood, very little is known about development and risk assessment of soft-plaques.
In this thesis, the possibilities of automatic segmentation and quantification of soft-plaques along the major coronary arteries should be examined. The segmentation results should then be transformed to a volume score value very similar to the traditional scoring methods for calcium plaques. Subsequently, based on the quality of the results a clinical evaluation could be perfomed.

Advisor(s)

• Dr.-Ing. Matthias Teßmann
• Prof. Dr. Günther Greiner