Going Off-Grid: Continuous Implicit Neural Representations for 3D Vascular Modeling

Dieuwertje Alblas, Christoph Brune, Kak Khee Yeung, Jelmer Maarten Wolterink

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)
125 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Personalised 3D vascular models are valuable for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment planning in patients with cardiovascular disease. Traditionally, such models have been constructed with explicit representations such as meshes and voxel masks, or implicit representations such as radial basis functions or atomic (cylindrical) shapes. Here, we propose to represent surfaces by the zero level set of their signed distance function (SDF) in a differentiable implicit neural representation (INR). This allows us to model complex vascular structures with a representation that is implicit, continuous, light-weight, and easy to integrate with deep learning algorithms. We here demonstrate the potential of this approach with three practical examples. First, we obtain an accurate and watertight surface for an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) from CT images and show robust fitting from as few as 200 points on the surface. Second, we simultaneously fit nested vessel walls in a single INR without intersections. Third, we show how 3D models of individual arteries can be smoothly blended into a single watertight surface. Our results show that INRs are a flexible representation with potential for minimally interactive annotation and manipulation of complex vascular structures.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationStatistical Atlases and Computational Models of the Heart. Regular and CMRxMotion Challenge Papers
Subtitle of host publication13th International Workshop, STACOM 2022, Held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2022, Singapore, September 18, 2022, Revised Selected Papers
EditorsOscar Camara, Esther Puyol-Antón, Avan Suinesiaputra, Alistair Young, Chen Qin, Maxime Sermesant, Shuo Wang
Pages79-90
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-031-23443-9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022
Event13th Workshop of Statistical Atlases and Computational Modeling of the Heart, STACOM 2022 - Singapore, Singapore
Duration: 18 Sept 202218 Sept 2022

Conference

Conference13th Workshop of Statistical Atlases and Computational Modeling of the Heart, STACOM 2022
Abbreviated titleSTACOM 2022
Country/TerritorySingapore
CitySingapore
Period18/09/2218/09/22

Keywords

  • Implicit neural representations
  • Vascular model
  • Abdominal aortic aneurysm
  • Signed distance function
  • Level set
  • 2023 OA procedure

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