One of the poorer post-PCI outcomes is side branch occlusion. It is found that the patency rate of main vessel after implantation of drug eluting stent (DES) is satisfactory while side branch ostium still needs revascularization. When side branch occlusion occurs, it is found to be associated with intrinsic ostial disease, including stenosis and diffused plaque around ostium. In recent years, researchers continuously developed devices and stenting strategy to optimize PCI …show more content…
The drive for automatic side branch analysis motivated many researchers to develop new methods. Wang et al. have presented a fully automated method for side branch detection, which has been proved effective to help decide optimal stenting strategy, select stent and evaluate PCI results at follow-up. It is noted by Karanasos et al. that in bifurcation assessment, the evaluation of side branch ostium could speed up lesion analysis and reduce contrast volume which could possibly improve patients’ comfort. Despite the critical role the evaluation of side branch ostium may play in the treatment of bifurcation lesions, to the best of our knowledge, no method has been presented to precisely identify not only the side branch, but also its ostium. Thus the aim of this study was to provide a novel method which identifies the side branch as well as its ostium and conducts vessel measurements