A Systematic Survey and Evaluation of Blood Vessel Extraction Techniques

The automatic extraction of brain vessels from Magnetic Resonance Angiography (MRA) has found its application in vascular disease diagnosis, endovascular operation and neurosurgical planning. In this paper we first present a concise methodology, pros & cons of well-known vessel extraction techniques. A systematic survey of latest development in the area of vessel extraction by using region growing algorithms is present. Then we detail the main challenges of vessel extraction and segmentation area. Based on review and our experience in the area, we finally present enhancement in region growing algorithm. Our proposed algorithm shows performance improvement as compare to traditional region growing algorithm.