AN INTERACTIVE VIRTUAL INTRACORONARY STENTING SYSTEM BASED ON INTRAVASCULAR ULTRASOUND.

Percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) is a minimally invasive surgery in the clinical treatment of coronary artery diseases. The successful operation highly depends on the size and accurate placement of the stent. In this study, a virtual stenting (VS) system was designed and implemented to facilitate the planning of PTCA. A three-dimensional (3D) vessel model was reconstructed through fusing intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) sequential images and simultaneously recorded X-ray angiograms during cardiac intervention. The user is allowed to intuitively explore the vessel in an endoscopic manner by creating/updating a fly-through trajectory in the lumen. A virtual stent library including a better variety of commercially available bare metal heart stents was built. The user is allowed to select a proper stent according to the morphology of the vessel and lesion and to move it to the lesion. Also, the user can visually observe the stent expansion/apposition and flexibly adjust its position. The system is used to assist visual diagnosis of the vascular diseases, evaluation of interventional treatment and training of the medical personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]