Travis B.
Smith1, Krishna S. Nayak1
1Electrical Engineering,
Estimation
of coronary artery cross-sectional lumen area from MR images is now being
used to assess the relationship between atherosclerosis and vasomotion
response to endothelial-dependent stimuli. Typically, cross-sectional images
of the coronary lumen acquired before and after administration of such
stimuli are fit to circular templates to estimate the change in area. These
studies have reported very small mean changes in lumen area. In this work, we
develop a statistical framework for the detection of these subtle changes in
lumen area using two images. We use
this framework to relate detection performance to SNR requirements and
minimum detectable dilation.