The overall goal is to build micro-radiographic, small field-of-view imagers for detecting small vessels such as perforators and features such as stent wires which may be crucial to present and future cerebro- vascular interventions but which may not be normally visualized with present day systems. The new cameras will be used with catheter-based minimally invasive procedures to provide very high resolution (10 line pairs per mm) digital images of a region of interest (ROI) around the interventional site. The ROI micro-angiographic imagers will be based on a high resolution x-ray absorbing phosphor viewed through a slight fiberoptic taper by a large area silicon chip charge coupled device (CCD) light sensor. A series of increasingly automated insertion mechanisms and a computer workstation will be developed to allow the camera to be positioned and used with standard angiographic imaging equipment. Once built and characterized physically, the micro- angiographic ROI cameras will be evaluated in terms of the role such improved imaging capability might have during neuro-vascular interventions where devices such as stents and coils or materials such as glue are placed so as to treat vessel stenoses, aneurysms and arteriovenous malformations. Extensive phantom and animal studies to test the applicability to specific interventional tasks will occur simultaneously with gradual application to human procedures and evaluation by clinical interventionalists. The effect that the additional high resolution images from the new cameras may have on each decision made by the interventionalist during the course of the procedure will be analyzed to determine whether the procedure was altered and improved. Use for both single-plane and bi-plane micro- angiography and for providing data for 3D rendered vascular models will be investigated.
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