Reproducibility of Coronary Artery Diameter Assessments in Magnetic Resonance Coronary Angiography: Phantom Study

This report describes the development of a deformable model for the automatic delineation of coronary artery cross-sectional areas with magnetic resonance imaging. The method is validated with coronary artery phantoms of varying diameters and images with different levels of signal-to-noise ratios. The reproducibility of the technique was examined with simulated geometrical shifts and motions during data acquisition. The experimental results indicate a very high reproducibility and low inter-observers variability of the technique, suggesting its suitability for non-invasive assessment of serial changes of vessel dilatation following pharmacological intervention.