Vascular data processing and image registration systems, methods, and apparatuses

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10687777-B2
Application number	US-201815911749-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 5, 2018
Priority date	Mar 12, 2013
Publication date	Jun 23, 2020
Grant date	Jun 23, 2020

Abstract

In part, the invention relates to processing, tracking and registering angiography images and elements in such images relative to images from an intravascular imaging modality such as, for example, optical coherence tomography (OCT). Registration between such imaging modalities is facilitated by tracking of a marker of the intravascular imaging probe performed on the angiography images obtained during a pullback. Further, detecting and tracking vessel centerlines is used to perform a continuous registration between OCT and angiography images in one embodiment.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of co-registering angiographic data and intravascular data obtained with regard to a blood vessel comprising storing a plurality of frames of intravascular image data in memory;
storing a plurality of frames of angiography image data in memory;
substantially reducing or removing one or more shadows, using one or more computing devices, in the plurality of frames of angiography image data;
removing a guide catheter image from one or more frames of angiography image data using superposition of an intensity profile;
generating a vessel trace for each frame of the plurality of frames of angiography image data, using the one or more computing devices;
detecting a probe marker in the plurality of frames of angiography image data, using the one or more computing devices; and
tracking a position of the probe marker along one or more vessel traces, using the one or more computing devices.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising co-registering the plurality of frames of angiography image data and the plurality of frames of intravascular data using the tracked position of the probe marker relative to one or more vessel traces.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
detecting a catheter in the plurality of frames of angiography image data, using the one or more computing devices; and
removing the detected catheter from the plurality of frames of angiography image data, using the one or more computing devices.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein removing the detected catheter is performed using superposition of an intensity profile generated based on a sampling of regions of the detected catheter.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the one or more shadows are selected from the group consisting of a cardiac shadow and a diaphragm shadow.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising applying an image processing transform to one or more frames of angiography image data to remove or modify a feature therein and increasing an intensity of a plurality of pixels, the plurality of pixels corresponding to the probe marker or a guidewire.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising generating a score indicative of a level of confidence in co-registration between a frame of angiography image data and a frame of the intravascular data.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein each vessel trace is a curve along the blood vessel that includes a proximal point and a distal point, wherein the distal point is the detected marker.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of co registering the plurality of frames of angiography image data and the plurality of frames of intravascular data comprises generating a co-registration table, using a computing device, the co-registration table comprising angiography image data frames, a plurality of per frame intravascular data time stamps, a plurality of per frame angiography data time stamps, and intravascular image data frames.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising displaying a stent representation in an intravascular image and an angiography image in a user interface using a co-registration table and a computing device.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein detecting a probe marker comprises identifying probe marker candidates by identifying a relative maximum in a neighborhood of pixels.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of generating a vessel trace comprises applying one or more image processing operators to each angiography image data frame and applying a fast marching method relative to a first point and a second point in each frame.

13. The method of claim 1 further comprising applying a bottom hat operator to one or more frames of angiography image data and applying a morphological close operation to the one or more frames of angiography image data.

14. The method of claim 1 further comprising generating a confidence score for each detection and co-registration between angiography image data and intravascular image data.

15. The method of claim 1 further comprising performing a morphological image reconstruction for each probe marker candidate.

16. The method of claim 1 wherein tracking a position of the probe marker is performed using template matching.

17. The method of claim 1 wherein tracking a position of the probe marker is performed using a Viterbi dynamic programming method.

18. A method of co-registering angiographic data and intravascular data obtained with regard to a blood vessel comprising storing a plurality of frames of intravascular image data in memory;
storing a plurality of frames of angiography image data in memory;
substantially reducing or removing one or more shadows, using one or more computing devices, in the plurality of frames of angiography image data;
generating a vessel trace for each frame of the plurality of frames of angiography image data, using the one or more computing devices;
detecting a probe marker in the plurality of frames of angiography image data, using the one or more computing devices;
tracking a position of the probe marker along one or more vessel traces, using the one or more computing devices; and
co-registering the optical coherence tomography data and the angiography data using vessel traces to create a continuous registration of a tracked marker, and displaying two or more co-registered angiography images and optical coherence tomography images, wherein the intravascular data is optical coherence tomography data, wherein the probe marker is attached to an intravascular optical coherence tomography probe.

19. A method of co-registering angiographic data and intravascular data obtained with regard to a blood vessel comprising:
storing a plurality of frames of intravascular image data in memory;
acquiring, using a frame grabber, time stamped frames of angiography image data;
storing a plurality of the time stamped frames of angiography image data in memory;
substantially reducing or removing one or more shadows, using one or more computing devices, in the plurality of frames of angiography image data;
generating a vessel trace for each frame of the plurality of frames of angiography image data, using the one or more computing devices;
detecting a probe marker in the plurality of frames of angiography image data, using the one or more computing devices; and
tracking a position of the probe marker along one or more vessel traces, using the one or more computing devices.

Assignees

• Lightlab Imaging Inc

Inventors

• Dascal Lorina
• Winkler Itai
• Cohen Stavit
• Cohen Amit
• Adler Desmond C

Classifications

• A61B6/12

  Arrangements for detecting or locating foreign bodies · CPC title

• A61B8/12

  in body cavities or body tracts, e.g. by using catheters · CPC title

• A61B5/0084

  for introduction into the body, e.g. by catheters (A61B5/1459 takes precedence) · CPC title

• A61B2090/3735

  Optical coherence tomography [OCT] · CPC title

• A61B6/481

  involving the use of contrast agents · CPC title