Abstract: Applying the traditional minimum cost path algorithm to find the centerline through bend vessel yields a biased path which closes to the one side of vessel wall. To solve this problem, a centering method based on points is proposed. The centerline is extracted preliminary by minimum cost path algorithm, then the center point is corrected by gray Gaussian curve fitting, and a smoothed centerline is obtained finally by using cubic B-spline fitting to the discrete corrected points. The experimental results show that this method is robust to the noise and the extracted centerline is closer to the center of vessel at the areas of high curvature. Besides, this centerline is not sensitive to the user-defined points by applying the centering method to correct the position of start-point and end-point.

Key words: vessel, centerline extraction, minimum cost path algorithm, Gaussian profile, centering

摘要： 为解决传统最小代价路径算法提取血管中心线时存在偏向血管侧壁的问题，提出一种基于点的中心线校正方法。应用最小代价路径算法初步提取中心线，然后根据血管剖面灰阶值呈高斯分布的特点对每个中心点进行校正，再利用三次B样条将离散的中心点拟合为一条连续的中心线。实验结果表明，该算法提取的中心线更靠近血管的中心处，且对噪声具有鲁棒性。此外，将该算法用于起点、终点位置的校正，则提取的中心线对用户定义点的位置不敏感。

关键词: 血管, 中心线提取, 最小代价路径算法, 高斯剖面, 中心校正