Stabilized display of coronary arteries

When an observer is trying to detect a target embedded in dynamic noise (noise that changes through time) it is often desirable to increase the display frame rate because they allow for more noisy frames to be more efficiently integrated by the human observer and therefore improve human detection performance.  A potential problem when applying this concept to real noisy dynamic medical images such as x-ray coronary angiograms is that the feature of interest (whether it is the artery itself or a morphological feature within an arterial segment) is moving. As a result, as the display frame rate is increased the motion becomes more rapid and abrupt, making visual tracking by the human observer difficult. The difficulty in visual tracking can have detrimental effects on human performance.  James S. Whiting (Director of Medical Physics & Imaging) and Neil Eigler (Director of the Cahterization Laboratory) at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles proposed an optimized display for coronary angiograms where each image of the sequence is digitally shifted so that the feature of interest within an artery remains fixed at the center of the screen while the background moves. This stabilized display permits fast display of the image sequences while allowing the observer to scrutinize the feature of interest without having to eye-track  rapid and erratic arterial motion. This technique has shown to improve significantly accuracy detecting lesions and to reduce decision times.

Untracked sequence of simulated arteries on clinical angiogram background	Tracked sequence of simulated arteries on clinical angiogram background

The following is an example of the tracking on four simulaed arterial segments combined with real x-ray coronary angiograms. Unfortunately the display frame-rate in our demo is currently limited by the browser-animation software.

Collaborators:

James S. Whiting, Department of Medical Physics and Imaging
Cedars Sinai Medical Center

 

Publications:

Eckstein, M.P., Bartroff, J.L., Morioka, C.A.., Vodopich, D.J., Whiting, J.S, Feature stabilized digital x-ray coronary angiograms improve human visual detection in JPEG compressed images, Optics Express, 6, 193-199, (1999) 

Bartroff, J., Morioka, C.A., Whiting, J.S., Eckstein, M.P., Image compression and feature stabilization of dynamically displayed coronary angiograms, Medical Imaging, Image Perception, Proceedings, SPIE 3036 ,1999) 

Eigler, N., Eckstein, M.P., Honig, D., Whiting, J.S.  Improving detection of coronary morphologic features from digital angiograms: Effect of stenosis stabilized display, Circulation 89(6)2700-9 (1994).