Patent ID: 11315293

Abstract:
A computer-implemented method for autonomous segmentation of contrast-filled coronary artery vessels includes receiving a CT scan volume representing a 3D volume of a region of anatomy that includes a pericardium; preprocessing the CT scan volume to output a preprocessed scan volume; converting the CT scan volume to three sets of two-dimensional slices; extracting a region of interest (ROI) by autonomous segmentation of the heart region as outlined by the pericardium, by means of three individually trained ROI extraction convolutional neural networks (CNN), each trained to process a particular one of the three sets of two-dimensional slices to output a mask denoting a heart region as delineated by the pericardium; combining the preprocessed scan volume with the mask to obtain a masked volume; converting the masked volume to three groups of sets of two-dimensional masked slices; and performing autonomous coronary vessel segmentation to output a mask denoting the coronary vessels.