In-vivo accuracy of geometrically correct three-dimensional reconstruction of human coronary arteries: is it influenced by certain parameters?

Objective: The geometrically correct three-dimensional reconstruction of human coronary arteries by integrating intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and biplane angiography constitutes a promising imaging method for coronaries with broad clinical potential. The determinants of the accuracy of the method, however, have not been investigated before.

Methods: In total, 17 arterial segments (right coronary artery, n=7; left anterior descending, n=4; left circumflex, n=6) derived from nine patients were three-dimensionally reconstructed by applying three-dimensional intravascular ultrasound. The degree of matching between the reconstructed lumen back-projected onto each angiographic plane and the actual lumen in each plane was used as a measure of method's accuracy. The investigated factors that could potentially affect the reliability of the method included the type of the artery (left anterior descending, left circumflex, right coronary artery) and several geometrical and morphological characteristics of the reconstructed arteries.

Results: The correlation between the back-projected reconstructed lumens and the actual angiographic ones was found to be high (r=0.78, P<0.001). Neither the category of the reconstructed arteries nor their particular geometrical and morphological characteristics influenced the accuracy of the reconstruction method significantly. Nonetheless, the method exhibited slightly less accuracy in the reconstruction of right coronary arteries, an observation that could be attributed to the more intense pulsatile motion that this artery experiences during the cardiac cycle compared to the left anterior descending and left circumflex artery.

Conclusions: The in-vivo accuracy of three-dimensional intravascular ultrasound (3D IVUS) is significantly high regardless of the type of the coronary arteries or their particular geometrical and morphological characteristics. This finding further supports the applicability of the method for either diagnostic or investigational purposes.