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<p>Using computers, automatically segmenting X-ray coronary angiograms (CAG) is essential for identifying and planning treatments for diseases affecting the heart’s blood vessels. Achieving precise coronary artery segmentation in X-rays is costly and time-consuming for cardiologists due to uneven noise, poor lighting, and distracting background details that complicate accurate segmentation of the X-ray CAG. To address these challenges, a novel framework is proposed to segment a CAG tree without the involvement of cardiologists. The framework operates in two phases: establishing a vessel tree ground truth and enhancing the generated mask. First, we will establish a ground truth for X-ray CAG through image denoising, contrast enhancement, and border removal. Next, Vessel-Enhanced Boundary U-Net (VEB U-Net) enhances the segmented vessel tree by combining boundary features with the main X-ray CAG. A Sobel edge detector has been incorporated into the segmentation model to improve boundary feature representation. A novel loss function utilizes boundary and shape information to produce more accurate results. The experiments used a public dataset of 2291 grayscale CAG X-ray images from 100 patients. Based on evaluations, the framework achieves the following: (i) It removes the requirement for manual ground truth in a supervised model, (ii) it reduces the cost and time needed for cardiologists to label X-ray CAGs, and (iii) it improves the segmented vessel tree with an accuracy of 96.9% based on a test set assessed by a single expert cardiologist. After validation from the cardiologist, the experiment indicated that the system successfully separated the vessels and could help detect heart diseases early.</p>

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Self-supervised vessel segmentation in X-ray angiograms using a boundary encoder-decoder structure

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月22日

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  • Ahmed M. Gab Allah,
  • Ahmed J. A. Aboenaba,
  • Karim Elakabawi,
  • Tarek M. Mahmoud

摘要

Using computers, automatically segmenting X-ray coronary angiograms (CAG) is essential for identifying and planning treatments for diseases affecting the heart’s blood vessels. Achieving precise coronary artery segmentation in X-rays is costly and time-consuming for cardiologists due to uneven noise, poor lighting, and distracting background details that complicate accurate segmentation of the X-ray CAG. To address these challenges, a novel framework is proposed to segment a CAG tree without the involvement of cardiologists. The framework operates in two phases: establishing a vessel tree ground truth and enhancing the generated mask. First, we will establish a ground truth for X-ray CAG through image denoising, contrast enhancement, and border removal. Next, Vessel-Enhanced Boundary U-Net (VEB U-Net) enhances the segmented vessel tree by combining boundary features with the main X-ray CAG. A Sobel edge detector has been incorporated into the segmentation model to improve boundary feature representation. A novel loss function utilizes boundary and shape information to produce more accurate results. The experiments used a public dataset of 2291 grayscale CAG X-ray images from 100 patients. Based on evaluations, the framework achieves the following: (i) It removes the requirement for manual ground truth in a supervised model, (ii) it reduces the cost and time needed for cardiologists to label X-ray CAGs, and (iii) it improves the segmented vessel tree with an accuracy of 96.9% based on a test set assessed by a single expert cardiologist. After validation from the cardiologist, the experiment indicated that the system successfully separated the vessels and could help detect heart diseases early.