Fully automatic computation of the shape of a micro-catheter

Volume representations of blood vessels acquired by 3D rotational angiography are very suitable for diagnosing an aneurysm. If the aneurysm volume is known, a physician may fill an aneurysm via a catheter. To guide this catheter, a micro-catheter, selected and pre-molded for easy entry into the aneurysm, is moved through the vessels. We developed a method to compute the corridor through the vessels and from this corridor the shape of the micro-catheter. This method has been tested on 28 clinical volume data-sets.