Maximum a posteriori estimation method for aorta localization and coronary seed identification

We propose a robust method for the automatic identification of seed points for the segmentation of coronary arteries from coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA). The detection of the aorta and the two ostia for use as seed points is required for the automatic segmentation of coronary arteries. Our method is based on a Bayesian framework combining anatomical and geometrical features. We demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of our method by comparison with two conventional methods on 130 CT cases.