Simultaneous label fusion with vessel preserving for bone removal in CT angiography scans.

When visualizing vessels with CT angiography scans, the arteries are often obstructed by bones. Traditional methods require an additional non-enhanced scan to acquire a bone mask which is then subtracted from the original CTA scan. In this study, we present an automated bone removal method using only contrast enhanced scans based on simultaneous label fusion. We build an atlas database where each atlas is paired with a bone label and a vessel label. After the atlases are mapped to a subject, we propose a vessel preserving scheme to protect possible vessel areas from bone removal by simultaneous label fusion. Seven clinical data sets were used for validation and the results showed that this method can achieve consistent and thorough bone removal with maximal vessels preservation.