Reducing the X-ray radiation exposure frequency in cardio-angiography via deep-learning based video interpolation

TL;DR

This paper presents a deep-learning based video interpolation method to synthesize high frame rate coronary angiography videos from low frame rate videos, significantly reducing X-ray exposure during cardiac surgeries.

Contribution

It introduces a new dataset and a retrained deep-learning model for coronary angiography video interpolation, enabling lower X-ray exposure without compromising video quality.

Findings

Achieved an average PSNR of 34dB in synthesized videos

Demonstrated the feasibility of reducing X-ray exposure in clinical settings

Produced high-quality interpolated videos from low frame rate inputs

Abstract

Cardiac coronary angiography is a major technology to assist doctors during cardiac interventional surgeries. Under the exposure of X-ray radiation, doctors inject contrast agents through catheters to determine the position and status of coronary vessels in real time. To get a coronary angiography video with a high frame rate, the doctor needs to increase the exposure frequency and intensity of the X-ray. This will inevitably increase the X-ray harm to both patients and surgeons. In this work, we innovatively utilize a deep-learning based video interpolation algorithm to interpolate coronary angiography videos. Moreover, we establish a new coronary angiography image dataset ,which contains 95,039 triplets images to retrain the video interpolation network model. Using the retrained network we synthesize high frame rate coronary angiography video from the low frame rate coronary angiography video. The average peak signal to noise ratio(PSNR) of those synthesized video frames reaches 34dB. Extensive experiment results demonstrate the feasibility of using the video frame interpolation algorithm to synthesize continuous and clear high frame rate coronary angiography video. With the help of this technology, doctors can significantly reduce exposure frequency and intensity of the X-ray during coronary angiography.