Use of the Hough transformation to detect lines and curves in pictures
Communications of the ACM
A First Study on the Use of Coevolutionary Algorithms for Instance and Feature Selection
HAIS '09 Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems
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Cardiovascular mortality remains a leading health and social problem in many countries throughout the world. Therefore, it is obvious that current preventive measures include early detection of atherosclerosis process. Computed tomography (CT) is one of imaging modalities allowing for noninvasive detection of atherosclerotic lesion within coronary arteries in subjects with accumulation of risk factors (smoking, high lipids, hypertension, etc.). Functional analysis of coronary arteries is usually approached by means of invasive procedures. We aimed at finding solution for evaluation of another kind of functional analysis of coronary arteries, namely vessel's wall compliance by means of CT coronary angiography. On the basis of the CT images of the vessels over entire cardiac cycles, the internal area of the blood vessel is measured and its changes during various phases of heartbeat (systole, diastole) are calculated. If the vessel wall has been changed by atherosclerotic plaque, either calcified or non-calcified, then its compliance will be reduced due to its stiffness. Calculation of coronary artery compliance requires a series of measurements, which is unreliable and impractical for doing manually. The overall methodology proposed in this paper assists in the preparation of a medical diagnosis.